Think Like A Game Designer - Elizabeth Hargrave — Breaking the Mold with Wingspan, Lessons In Successful Game Pitches, Embracing Unique Genres, and Championing Inclusivity in Game Design (#29)

Episode Date: July 27, 2021

Elizabeth Hargrave’s games are known for breaking the thematic mold. In her first game, Wingspan, you play as bird enthusiasts out to discover and attract the best birds to your network of wildlife preserves. The game is wildly popular and won the 2019 Kennerspiel des Jahres. In this episode, we discuss designing, playtesting, and pitching these groundbreaking games. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit justingarydesign.substack.com/subscribe

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 Season 3 of Think Like a Game Designer. I'm very excited to continue to bring you more amazing guests, design lessons, and tips about the gaming industry. but I also want to share something new and exciting that I'm launching this year. In addition to the podcast and the book for Think Like a Game Designer, I'm also launching a master class for those that really want to go deep into game design

and work with an incredible group of people to take your projects to the next level. We've already had an incredible beta group go through the course last year. It includes video lessons for me, access to an exclusive Discord group, monthly masterminds where we can dive deep into the actual problems that you have with your own designs and really walk you through everything that it takes to go from initial idea, whether you have a project you really want to work on, or you have no idea where to start, all the way through to getting your game published, whether that's launching it via Kickstarter, launching your own company, selling it to a publisher, or whatever you want to do to make your game design dreams come true.

If you think you might be the right fit for this course, go to think like a game designer.com, to learn more. In today's episode, I speak with Elizabeth Hargrave. Elizabeth is probably best known for her game Wing Span, which has won countless awards, including the 2019 Kennerspiel de Jars, and is well known throughout the world as one of the most accessible games that brings in a very different type of genre into the gaming world. As someone who typically designs games that involve lots of dragons and wizards and battles, I was really enamored with the idea that you could build a game around birds, bird watching, or other passions that were not as directly confrontational or frankly cliched as a lot of the games that are in the gaming industry now. I speak with Elizabeth

about what it was like to craft this game and how her passion for the subject matter helped to inform the design. We also talked quite a bit about what it was like to pitch the game because Elizabeth, like probably many of you out there, didn't feel super comfortable with the idea of pitching games directly. And so she really developed a system for herself that worked to help train herself for how to do pitches and to train her mindset for how you can get through the inevitable nose, the inevitable challenges that come with pitching. And for someone like her to be able to come through that, there's a lot of amazing lessons in this conversation for you. We also talk about representation in the gaming industry and the challenges of not having as many women and people

of color in game design and what it's like to be a more inclusive community and the value that everybody gets by having more ideas, more themes, more mechanics, more discussions that come from people of very diverse backgrounds and that we all lift the industry up by being more inclusive and we discuss some of the ways that we can get to do that. So there's a lot of great stuff in this podcast, especially for people that are just getting started and want to be able to figure out how to pitch their game or for people who have ideas that you think maybe are a bit outside the norm or not something that you see represented a lot, whether that's because of who you are as a designer, your background, or your interests. This is an wonderful, inspiring podcast with a wonderful

and inspiring person. And so without any further to do, here is Elizabeth Hargrave. Hello and welcome. I am here with Elizabeth Hargraves. Elizabeth, it's great to speak with you. Hi. Thanks for having me. Yeah. This is exciting because, you know, the last time, I think maybe the only time that we actually got to connect was on that panel for the spiel at GenCon. 2019, which I guess was the last Gen Con from. And so I really enjoyed the time we got to chat and deep dive. And we had put a pin in having another conversation. And now finally, here we are.

Right. So I love, you know, I've done some research. I know I love a fair amount about your backstory. And I really, I want you to be able to share it with my audience because there's so much similarity in the stories of the people that have come on my podcast about how they got into things. and yours is very different. So if you don't mind talking about your kind of origin,

what got you into gaming and what got you started on the path as a designer, we'll dig into some principles there. So my family was always like a low-key mass market gaming family. And we played us, and especially even not mass market, but like classic card games. So a lot of hearts and spades and all that stuff. Right. Um, didn't rob me.

Um, but I first started playing hobby board games in about 2005. And I was just like at a weekend retreat thing where someone had brought a bunch of them. Right. Um, so played like a bunch of the classics all in that weekend, right? Like, took a ride and Carcassone and I don't know if, I don't think we had Catan there, but Caton soon and after that and, um, Blockus, I remember. and just was like in deep from now on. I'm just totally hooked.

Yeah, that's great. So when you started and, you know, later on finding games and getting really excited about it and you list a lot of great kind of crossover games where we start getting in from, into some, you know, beyond the hearts and spades of the world. And then at what point did you think, you know, I could do this. This would be fun. I want to make a game. There were a couple things.

One of them was that I found out that a friend of mine from high school, who was also a big gamer and sort of reinforcing this whole experience along the way, I found out that he was playtesting. He didn't say for whom, but it turned out many years later, I found out that it was for Matt Leacock. All right, not bad. But so I think that's the thing that sort of first planted the seed in my mind that board games are a thing that are made by people.

Yes, it's amazing how often I get that. It's like, oh, what? People do that? That's a job? Right, right. And so from there, I think it was even, you know, a few years after that, had been playing board games for probably nearly a decade and started having conversations with some of my friends about,

like, why are the themes all in these, like, very narrow categories? it seemed like to us. Like we were playing a lot of games about trains and castles and, you know, this is the whole zombie genre. It's like there are these topics and there are not actually that many of them.

And, you know, in retrospect, I understand how publishers end up there. But for me, I was like, I love the mechanics of these games, but very few of them are actually about anything that I'm interested in. Right. Yeah, and so there's a couple of things to break apart here.

One is I actually use you and Wigspan as an example almost every time I talk about game design because the theme and the passion that you have for it comes across so powerfully in the game design. But if you had pitched to me, I'm going to make a game about birds and people are going to love it. I don't think I would have had the foresight to see that that was going to be a success. And because I, I'm the, by default, the cliche of, oh, yeah, I want wizards and dragons and spaceships. And so I, it really opened my eyes to like, no, we, you know, not only is it powerful as a way to kind of market a game and prevent and bring in new audiences, but it's powerful as a lesson, I think, and let me know how you feel about this. That it's a powerful as a lesson of, like, if you're really passionate about something, you can bring that to bear in a way that's going to be compelling for other people. and it's going to resonate with other people.

So like no matter what it is that your, you know, your particular interest is that it's really worth exploring that and the things that you're curious about and bringing them to your designs. Yeah. I mean, I think it helps that birding is a super popular activity

and interest of people more than I think a lot of people realize. But so that created like this whole secondary market outside of the games world. Right. And then there was like this. niche of people who were already both gamers and burghers who kind of lost their minds of the concept of a game about birds. And I think that helps too, like having that core set of people that like, oh my God, this is the one game in the world that is like for them.

Right. They become your super fans. But yeah, I definitely had to do a lot of research and sort of think very carefully about which publishers to pitch to. Right, right. Yeah. And so that I'm actually interested because what I hear from that, not only is just research on publishers, but research on market. Was that a part of your decision? Did you think through like, yeah, there are millions of bird watchers and a lot of them play games? And so I think this is a good market. Was that part of your decision when you started making the game? I mean, sort of on an intuitive level, it wasn't like as explicit as the way you just said it. So there's X of these and Y percentage will carry the two.

Yeah. Okay. I think that's, it's interesting. And so I'll give a sort of case study of maybe the opposite. I got I got hired to do a game for the skateboarding as a trading card game several years ago. We're called Superheat. And we ended up doing, you know, how God is doing this thing with the X games and doing things with all this. And there's a lot of people that love skateboarding. And there's a lot of people that love card games. But the overlap was not as great as a lot. as we would have hoped. And so that blend of skateboarder that wants to play a trading card game did not seem to pan out in the same way as much as Birdwatchers who like board games. So there's an interesting, this idea of the overlap between the categories is, I think, a worthwhile one to think about when you're, you know, what genre do you want to bring into board games or whatever your designs are. Right.

And intuitively, to me, my reaction to that is sort of like the things that people love about skateboarding are sort of the adrenaline of it and the like the skill and the right the physicality of it and that's going to be hard to bring out in a card game right whereas people birding for so many people is about looking at beautiful things collecting your list of birds that you see like it just aligns with sort of this tableau builder that's got the bird art and collecting the cards that's great yeah so that that that that really, because when I think about the right way, I mean, we could riff on this for a little while,

because I think about the right way, when you're taking a theme and bringing it into a game, right? Anytime you're going to try to, the games are the way that we kind of simplify and provide structure to things that are in the world that tend to be more complicated and have lots of things going on and distill it down to its essence. And so when you brought up for wingspan and for birding,

right, a lot of the essence of it is beautiful things, looking at beautiful things, collecting things, being able to sort of categorize them. And that is exactly the kinds of stuff that you're doing in Wingspan, which I think is fantastic. And I'm the tendency is, and this is something I see from new designers, because Wingspan was your first design, which is incredible. And, you know, obviously, congratulations. It's amazing.

And, but the tendency with new designers is just to overcomplicate, right? To say, like, no, I have to represent this like it really is. And especially if you're really into the subject, you, you, you, you. you know, the tendency is to try to be very true to life and make everything connect. And your game does this amazing job of feeling right. It feels like what it's supposed to feel like. It feels like it's, but it doesn't overcomplicate things. It's something that anybody can, you know, most people can pick up.

How did you, did you start more complicated? Did you start less complicated? Like, what was the process like for you as you're trying to distill this big topic down into something that's approachable and still feels connected to its theme? Yeah, I started, in terms of the information on the cards, a little bit more complicated, I think. Like more factors, but like quickly, quickly realized I had too money. And that gameplay started simpler. And then the development process with Jamie Stegmeyer, a lot of it was sort of this back and forth.

trying to find a sweet spot where he knew, like, his core audience for Stone Meyer games once, you know, decently heavy games. And I wanted it to be, you know, like a good, meaty, like, satisfying to a hobby gamer kind of game. But I also wanted it to be accessible to people that didn't play a lot of games, but who might find it because they're burghers. Right. And I think that we ended up in a real sweet spot between those two. Yeah. Sort of camps of people that you were trying to satisfy. Yeah.

And as you said, the people who are birders who also like games, you know, it's like this is like, I can't believe this exists. There's several of them in my audience who I told that I was interviewing you and they just freaked out. They had like, oh, ask for all this question. What's your favorite bird? What's this? What's that? I'm like, all right, I'll try to get to it.

But what is your favorite bird, by the way? Do you have a favorite bird? I always say the Rosie at Spoonbill because I had to pick one because I didn't ask me that. Yes, exactly. Exactly. I have money. It's like the things, even like, yeah, what's your favorite? What's your favorite card in your game that you make?

What's your favorite of these things? I don't know. I love them all. What are you going to do? So the, so you talked about working with Jamie Stegmeyer at Stonemeyer and the process of development. But maybe we want to kind of break that down a little bit more because this was a very long timeline to produce this game, right?

it was five years, I think was, or five years or more. Ish, yeah, I kind of lost track. So, so, you know, this is something I tend to advise against for most of these kinds of games, right? It's a, you really want, you know, games take time to make, but if it, if it drags on for more than like two to three years, I find most designers it's, that means they're dragging their feet or they're not, they're not making progress. And how did you go down that road? what was the kind of maybe the pacing like and how did you keep yourself going for that long? That's not an easy path to stay,

keep motivation and keep going. Yeah, I mean, I think part of it is that there were some breaks in there for sure. But I mean, that's counting from like the day I was like, there should be a game about birds or actually, you know, it was my spouse who was firstly. We're having this conversation. And he said,

what if there was raised for the galaxy, even for birds. But, yeah. So it was really sort of this process of always feeling like I was moving forward because I was starting from absolute zero, like never having even thought about designing a game. So a lot of that time is also just doing a lot of reading more generally about game design. What books and resources did you find most times? helpful when you're on that path.

I listened actually to a lot of, I think almost the entire catalog of Ludology podcasts. That's great. I remember finding the Bamboozle Brothers website. They have a great section called From Inspiration to Publication. So that's Jake Cormier and Sanfung Lim and they sort of, walk through the steps of like people make board games and this is what you have to do to go from an idea to an actual published project.

Right. So things like that with really just like wrapping my head around what it actually even is to make a game. And then like it was probably a year before I actually playtested it anywhere in public. Like I was just with my friends and my spouse. And so then like once I got to public playtesting and especially with other designers, like really like realizing how much further I had to go. And having my own gut intuition too from having played games for so long, like knowing like what does a good game feel like this isn't there yet, but it seems to be getting better. And so like that feedback loop of, you know, playtest and iterate and it gets better and playtesting iterate.

Yeah, it just kept moving forward. And then at some point it got to the point where I was like, okay, this isn't moving forward and people seem to like it. People are offering to buy it from me when I play test. Like it seems like it's time to pitch. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, that's fantastic. So there's a couple of things there.

Even from like the, the, you know, the kind of humble beginnings, right? A lot of the, what is like the elevator pitch for your game, the kind of initial concept, the inspiration. It's like, what, race for the galaxy about birds? It's like, right? It's like as simple as that. And that's what things I really like to highlight. Because for people out there, it's like it doesn't, you know, you can any seed that's going to be these two things that you're excited about,

you can combine together, that's a great place to start and just run with the ball. And so it's awesome that you did that. I think that's great. And then you said something else, which I love, which is this, you know, I kept, I was iterating and focusing on the iterating and getting to that place to get to the feeling that's right. And, you know, it's getting better and better over time. And then now people want to buy it from you, right? People want to keep playing.

What I said is like, people like, that people want to play even when I'm not like prompting them for play testing. They're like, no, no, I want to play again. Like, I want to do that. Like, that's when I know it's like, okay, this is time to start moving into publishing. And so then when you go to start pitching, what was that process? Like was I think Stomeyer was the first team you pitched to. Is that right?

Well, I pitched to three different companies over the course of one GenCon. I think they were actually the last ones I met with. Okay. And had you been to Jen Con? Con before that? No, that was my first Gen. Okay. So this, I love this. Like, let's talk about this story. Let's, this is, this is amazing. Like, yeah, what? I had been to like smaller regional stuff, but I had just never gone to Gen Con. Like, I knew from my professional life that I don't love big conferences in general. So, like, the idea of going to a gaming convention with 70,000 people at it is kind of my worst nightmare.

Yeah, yeah. But it seemed like a good opportunity. Like the timing just lined up with. with when I felt like I was done and Jencom was coming up and I was able to find a place to stay and just make it happen. Yeah, yeah. It's, I mean, it is, it is kind of the, well, up until last year, anyway, it was the, the way you get your game seen, right? You go to go to these shows, Jen Con in particular is a great one for this and pitch your game to the publishers.

And that's like one of the best ways to get based. And since then now, even I've had to like build some like digital pitching tools and ways to be able to present that way. It's been much harder. Everybody's been struggling with it. But the, so how did you get the meet? Exactly. I really want to know, like, so you booked a, you booked a ticket to Jen Con. You're going by yourself. You're going with friends. By yourself. This is like to a, to going into like the lion's den, right? This is this is, you don't like big crowds. This is the thing. You've never done this before. You've never been to Jen Con. What, what is your plan? Like, what's going on? What's going through your head when you're there.

Like, I'm really excited about this, this story. This is the true hero's journey. Yeah, right. Yeah. So I scheduled two meetings by emails and then Stonemire that year had a thing where you could just book an event. Like, they didn't even screen who was asking for meetings with them. This was right as size was fulfilling.

Uh-huh. Okay. So they were like a different company at that. point than they are now. Right. And I, you know, I think they get a lot, a lot more pitches now than they were then. But, yeah, so I just, I booked the meetings and went, I knew some people who were going to be there, but I didn't, like, go with people.

And so mostly, yeah, I remember I spent a lot of time at my Airbnb with my phone video recording myself doing my pitch. And I got to the point where when I watched the video, it didn't make me cringe. Like I could get through it without stumbling. And everything was really smooth. And I wasn't umming and rephrasing everything. That was super, super helpful for me pitching to get it super, super smooth because then when you go into the meeting, you're going to be so much more nervous and awkward. So if you've gotten it to the point where you're like exceptionally smooth, then nervous and awkward knocks a little bit off of it and you still sound like a reasonable person. Yeah, yeah.

It's like a normal person. That's great. No, I mean, that's an amazing. That's an amazing tip. And so it's actually one of the things I advise for like students in my master class when they were going to do this digital pitch, they, you record yourself, right? And so actually, since it was a digital pitch, I actually just had them do a minute video that was edited and like exactly what you want to say.

You can show it to them at the beginning to kind of ease your way in. So you know you hit all your points and then you can kind of off. Oh, interesting. Yeah. So it's like creates an advantage of the digital effect that it's digital. Most of it makes it harder, but that was a really nice thing. So what other tips do you have then? What makes for a good pitch in your mind now that you've,

So the basic, I can, you know, empathizing like practice, you know, record yourself, wash it back, as painful as it is. It's actually one of the reasons I started doing this podcast was to force myself to track my own ums and us. And it's so painful. It's so eye-opening. Yeah. It's so eye-opening to record yourself.

I haven't done it a long time and I never listened to a podcast like this go back. Yeah. So I'm sure I'm doing it a lot. But see, there I go. Now we're both going to be super self-conscious. So yeah, that is very eye-opening. Other tips. I mean, so I sort of rehearsed this like two-minute version that ended with, you know,

do you have any questions or we could play through 15 minutes of the game if you want to see how it works. Yeah. And of course, everyone was like, yeah, that's just funny. Right. Yeah, that's fantastic. So there's a couple of key things that right that the initial pitch is very short and that you get, you know, you try to get to your key bullet points. In my mind is usually like you want to hit three major points that people, you really want them to take away and remember, right? Too much more than that. People just don't remember. So what are you hammering home? What's important? And this is a really hard and an important thing for people to do because, again, in your game, in your mind, you have all these ideas, you know all the details of it. You want to tell them everything about what's so awesome. And that's a mistake. You just need to kind of get the highlights. And then you offer them that opportunity to play and you bracketed it. Right.

You bracketed it to let's try 15 minutes. That's what you get because that's not, that's doable, right? That's if I'm at a convention as a publisher and I'm there and I'm waiting. And I can, okay, 15 minutes is not a scary amount. But this game takes an hour to play or two hours to play or whatever, you know, bigger games. Like people don't have that kind of time. And knowing that you've thought through that and saying, here's a 15 minute experience that will give you the information you need is also great. So these are all like great.

Right. And you got to make sure, too, that your prototype is like in the box, in the way that, like, you can whip it out and start playing almost immediately. And that you've stacked the decks so different kinds of cards are going to come out so that they'll see sort of what's in how it works. Yes. You know, and yeah, just making it as smooth as smooth as possible all the way through. Yeah, yeah. And practicing that in the same way that you practice the pitch, right? and you demo the game to other people. And I actually even advise, like, if you know that there's like a publisher, you really, really, really want, like schedule some others first.

Like, schedule somebody that you could at least give one real pitch to a real publisher before you get your dream publisher pitch because you for sure are going to watch it in ways that you're not happy about. And so it just goes to, you know, don't waste anybody's time. Definitely give real pitches, but don't give your best one first. You give yourself a chance to warm up. It's helpful. So how did it go when you went, so you did your first pitch at the show and how did it go for you?

Did it feel like, you know, you came out of it like, yeah, I nailed that. Did you come out of it uncertain? I just like, I'm always curious what the sort of emotional reactions are in these moments. Like I did reasonably well. I mean, one of the first two that wasn't Stone Meyer was an immediate like this isn't what we're interested in. And then the other one in Stone Meyer were both. like, you know, we're going to review our notes from all of the things that we saw at GenCon and then email people after the fact and ask them to send prototypes if we want to go to the next step.

Yep. So that was like a big question mark, which I think is very typical. Yes. You know, every once in a while, publisher falls in love with something and just takes it home from the show. But I think more and more people are doing the way I described it. But there were a few signs from the Stonemeyer guys from Jamie and Alan that they were interested then. They were definitely very complimentary. And they had very specific feedback about what they would do next in development, which then actually ended up rolling into when they emailed me.

They were like, we think we're interested, but what did you think about the feedback and how would you address it? So thank God I took notes. because then I was able to write back to them and say, you know, you gave me these five things or whatever many it was. And, you know, sort of here's a paragraph about what I would do on each of them to move the game to the next step. And then they came back and were like, great, do that and then send it to us. Right, right. Which was great. And so, you know, that actually took me a couple months to really work through some of the things.

and then I sent it off to them like around Thanksgiving. I think by the end of the year we had a signed contract. That's awesome. Yeah. So again, just a couple points to underline here as general principles. Take notes. Write things down for the love of God.

Always write things down. And like, it's like just obviously true when you're just doing playtesting and you're getting feedback from your playtesters. But when it's publishers that are doing this, you know, these are the people you're trying to actually sell your game to. Like,

it's very important feedback. Not to say that they're right, not to say that for sure you should do whatever they tell you, but if you really want to publish with them, then being able to reflect back on that, or at the very least be able to give them like you did, like sort of paragraphs of this. Here's how I would address this. We were going to go down this road. Does a couple things. One, it shows that you're a good person to work with and that you listen and can take criticism. And I will tell you, I don't care how good the game is. If the designer is not able to take criticism, I'm not going to work with them. I'm not going to pick up their game. I just, I don't want that in my, it's not worth it. Right? You want some.

somebody that's good to work with. So showing that you're good to work with is one of the most important things you can come away from one of these pitches with. And so you clearly did that. And then setting the expectations that you're not going to be getting a, you know, a buy right away, right? The best you can generally hope for is, okay, well, you know, we'll want to follow up. And what I recommend generally is that you get their information and you follow up with them a couple weeks later or whatever. You know, don't, don't wait because being polite but persistent, is another way that you could show that, hey, you're a good person to work with,

you won't drop the ball, and you stay top of mind. Yeah, I think I did sort of ask them if they were like, we're going to get back to people after Jen kind of, I think it's totally appropriate to ask, like about when do you think you'll be getting back to people and then if you don't hear from them, they gave you a time when it's okay to follow up because you haven't heard from them.

Yes, absolutely. Yeah, one of the other things that I'm remembering that I think helped me through this process was not long before I went to Jen Con. I heard a talk by a woman who published a book called Go For No, which is a very marketing-oriented. Like, I don't think people need to go out and read this book. But the concept that she pitches to marketing people who are doing like sales calls type marketing is like, you just have to push yourself through a certain number of contacts to get to a certain number of yeses, right?

And if you reframe it in your head, that getting a no is a success because you have put yourself out there and made one of those contacts, you're going for no, you're setting your goal. So if my goal was, I want to get rejected by 10 publishers, maybe somewhere along the way I'll get a yes,

but at least I've put myself out there and I've gotten basically playtest with some of the experts in the industry, right? Who are giving me feedback every time they reject me. Yes, 100%. You don't have to be afraid of the rejection at the same level that I think many people are afraid of it. Even an interaction that results

in not getting your game design, it has the potential to move forward. Yes. Oh, that is such gold. I honestly, I think if you could just like give that advice, like your goals get rejected by 10 publishers. And that's like you actually just framed it that way when you started trying to sell your game.

I think it would be people would come out with so much better. There was some study. I forget what it was. I heard it from Bernay Brown, who's the, you know, the sort of shame researcher. And she talked about it in one of her books where it's,

you know, there was a one group that was trying to do, an art project where they were like, you're getting graded on your three best pieces, right? And you have to do whatever your three best pieces are. We're going to grade those. And that's it. And the other one was, we just do as many as you can. Like, it doesn't matter.

You know, we just want all you just put as many of these things in. And then at the end, they found out which ones, they independent judges figured out which ones were the best. And the people that just were just putting out as many as they could all did better. And they had higher quality end results than the people who were just trying to make three great pieces. And so this idea of like putting things out there, getting, you know, getting feedback, having more reps in, right? It's true in playtesting.

It's true in pitching. It's true in all these kind of creative projects. And that the hardest thing that you already underlined, the hardest thing is that emotional rejection, the fear of rejection, the fear of not being good enough that that putting yourself out there and putting your baby on the line and like having someone tell you it's ugly and having to come back home and fix it up. And so I just think that's such wonderful. wonderful lessons to reinforce for people. So thank you for sharing that. I want to switch gears a little bit. And I want to talk because I started researching one of your other games,

Tussi-Mussi, and I think that's how it's pronounced, and that was really cool to me because you created it during a design challenge. And so maybe you could talk a little bit about that game and the kind of process behind it. Yes. So that was the summer when I had. finished working on wingspan, but it hadn't come out yet. And it was for Gen Camp, which is a little thing that people who aren't going to GenCon, like they set up online stuff and whatever.

Over the years, there have been many different design contests. Like usually a publisher will step up and say, yes, we will sponsor a contest for Jen Kant and send us your designs. So ButtonShai, who specializes an 18-card game, sponsored it that year, which must have been 2018. and yeah, I actually came to that contest partly because I was really pissed off having seen the list of finalists for another contest that year. I don't even remember which one it was, but there were like almost no women out of a list of 50 names or something. And I was just annoyed by that.

And so I was like, I'm entering every contest. So this punch I think came up And I think a lot of people enter these things Like they enter something they've already been working on But I designed Tussi-Mussi in the month Between the time the contest was announced In the time that the deadline came up And it's just like, okay, I'm going to throw my hat in the ring

Whatever I have at the end of the month I'll send in But the luxury of doing an 18-card game is that You know, there aren't that many moving pieces So it actually came together pretty quickly And it was so refreshing after having worked on 170 cards for wingspan. So I love the shift from, oh yeah, my first game took me like five years and my Lex game took me like 30 days.

That's an efficient increase. I don't know what the percentage is, but it's pretty much. Yeah. So I, yeah, I want to pick up on a couple of things you said. But the thing that I really love about this is that the power, you know, I always say deadlines are magic, right? Like the power of a deadline and the power of working within constraints, right? And what parameters or frames is what I usually terminology I use is.

I think it's just underestimated how strong that is, right? Because if you know you've got to get this thing done and you can only work with 18 cards and you've only got 30 days to do it, you just immediately focus in on what's important. You're like, okay, I can't have all these other complicated mechanics. I need to be able to build it in this way. And so do you, have you leveraged that in other designs or processes? or I know you've been, like you said, you've joined all the, all of the competitions for a while. But do you find that that is something you try to do in your designs, generally speaking,

put restrictions and deadlines on it earlier? You do, outside of the contest, you keep it pretty open-ended. I mean, deadline-wise, I think the thing that has driven me until the pandemic was that I have a group of people that I protest with every week. And so that becomes like a real momentum builder. or if you know you're going to go playtest, you get feedback, and you have this deadline of like, if you want to keep moving forward,

you want to have something new for the next week. So that's a really helpful process. And then there's a larger group that I'm part of that meets monthly. And so that is like a different level of deadlines. It's got the weekly deadline, the monthly deadline. I don't worry too much about how long a game takes across. those deadlines. So far I've just kind of let it be done.

Well, that's not entirely true because mariposa's. I then pitched that fall right after Tussi Masi as the result of a call that AEG put out for women designers to submit games to them. And that had a deadline. So that was another one of like, I had worked on it like a couple of years. years before that, I had totally shelved it. It wasn't working. I saw that announcement right around the time that I had finished Tussi-Mussi and was trying to figure out what I was going to be next. And I pulled mariposes off the shelf and it sort of came together. And I sent it to them saying,

like, I can see where this is going. I hope you can. I know it's not done. But like, I'm meeting your deadline and they signed it. Yeah. And they decided that they wanted to. it right before wingspin came out. That's great. So I think that, yeah, this is another thing that I've actually even wrestled with, right? Because I do, you know, I publish a lot of my own games. I also do games for other companies and it'll do pitches. And, you know, deciding when is okay to pitch, right?

When a game is like not done, done, but it's done enough that the vision is. there and then you can work with the publisher to get it across the finish line is an interesting thing. I don't know that I have a good answer for him. And it sounds like you, you know, again, the deadline sort of forced you to pitch something earlier than you might have been ready. But there's this, there's two sides to right. It's not good enough yet and they can't, they won't be able to see what's going on or it's not good yet. And this, you shouldn't pitch it. And the other side is like you've overdeveloped. You spent way too much time when you could have been getting more direct feedback from publishers or getting it in their hands and having them help you along to the finish line.

I don't know if there's any kind of principal advice we could give to people here. I'm trying to think of what I would say, but do you have any thoughts on this? Yeah, I haven't figured that out either. And now I'm in this totally different position where publishers want my stuff before it's done because they want to get it. So, and I actually, I signed a game with a publisher who saw something at Unpub. It was definitely like I never would have pitched it in the state that it was in. He needed a lot of work. But they wanted to work on it.

They had a developer that I really wanted to work with. So I was like, great, let's do it. And then that developer left the company. And none of us were super happy with like the next round of development. So it was unhappy that I passed it off to them at the stage that I did because in retrospect, I should have just worked it up further and not relied on someone else because they like weren't. in my head about where it was going, right? Right, right. Yeah, this has been a real thing. Yeah, I have, I'm a bit of a control freak myself.

So, like, I don't want to like give away a game until it's like, no, no, no. The vision is clear. Like, just take this and run with it into the end zone. It's not like, don't think it's super happy to work with developers. And like, once a game is at a certain point, I 100% agree that, like, developers will move it forward. And it is, I think, one of the best things you get out of working with a publisher as opposed to self-publishing. but I'm starting to realize that, no, I really do want it to be like to the point where I feel like I can't get much more done on it without bringing other people in. Yeah, I think that's knowing where your strengths are and where the publishers has those strengths, I think is really important as well, sort of like that tradeoff. And maybe that's a big part of the answer.

and yeah also recognizing that for a new for a new designer that doesn't have a reputation you're going to have a harder uphill battle getting your games accepted and so they have to be more polished before you pitch them right like if i if i go if i go to somebody with a game that's not fully developed but the the heart of it's there they know me they can trust that like i'm going to get it done and you similarly you know they'll take a game mobile sight unseen because they know you're going to do something good and you have to build up that reputation over time so so so i I think, yeah, starting with closer to the really finished and then moving backwards is reasonable. Yeah, I mean, I think to the extent that you can use some external, like, other designers or things to give you that, like, does it feel unfinished to you because you're being overly perfectionistic? Or is it, like, is it actually really good? Yeah, yeah. And perfectionism is another one of those shields, right? We protect ourselves from being hurt by saying, well, no, I'm not. It's not ready yet.

I won't let myself get criticized because I'm going to keep working on it and working on it, until it's perfect. And so, yeah, again, I use that metric, like we talked about earlier, is like, are my playtesters actively trying to play the game

without me forcing them to do so, right? Or in your case, actively trying to buy the game. Right, when I get to that point, now, okay, I should, if you're not pitching and you're not getting moving into the get rejected by 10 publishers phase, then it's probably fear speaking, not, you know, not strategy.

Yeah. So I want to pick up on something else you said. here because I want you know I brought up Tussie musty because I love the idea of constraints and and challenges and deadlines but you said that one of the motivations for you is that that the last contest that there were no women on a list of 50 finalists and that was a big motivator and and this is just you know it's a real problem in the industry right there's there's not a lot of you know most of the designers you know look like me there's a lot of white dudes and I want what was it about you that let you, you know, either choose to break through this mold or what do you think

is causing this disparity in the industry and how maybe we can start talking about how we fix it? There's so much to unpack. There is. There is. I loaded like three questions that could have their own podcast each on you. So I apologize for that. I just, I was so jarred by this. I took a note.

I'm like, we have to talk about this. Yeah. I mean, for me personally, I'm not sure what it is about me. to let me push through. I mean, I came up into a professional world in the 90s where women were in the minority and experienced sort of, you know, the phenomenon of there being like women in health policy groups

because we needed to have solidarity and things like that. And then that got better and better over time. And then as I got more and more involved, in the board gaming world, it was like way worse than my work world had ever been in terms of the skew, just the raw numbers of types of people.

And it was really shocking to me. And so what I think, just like I was like, I'm going to enter every contest because this is just like annoying to me. And I'm like, I'm going to keep coming back because this is just stupid. And I think there are a certain number of people who if you go to an event and you are the only person like you at that event, you're just not going to go back. And so part of it for me is like, I'll keep going back and then I'll be the person there that when the next person comes, they're not the only one, right?

So there is certainly an element of that. And I think as the first time you walk in the room and you're the only one, you don't know anyone, it's very off-putting. and scary. But then if you do keep coming back, you get to know the people. And if it is a group where there isn't actually a reason that there are no women there,

it's not that there are assholes who are driving people away. Then you just become friends with everyone and it's much less weird and scary every time you go. Right. But in terms of like why is the gender

count so off in games. I think there's a lot of historical factors just in like the history of D&D and magic and the numbers there. And like I had guy friends in high school who played D&D. Was I ever invited to play with him? No, why?

I don't know. Like it was the 80s. And I think that got built into just the culture in a lot of games. stores and gaming events. And it's just a self-perpetuating cycle until people, like, actively try to break it up. Or it moves very, very slowly, you know, towards balance. But it can move faster if people are more intentional about it.

Yeah, that's where, you know, right, gaming in principle, like, it should be this, and we all want it to be this incredibly welcoming place. And in practice, most of the time, that's what it is. We're here to get together and play games. And for people who are sometimes maybe socially awkward or have trouble with normal interactions, games give you this medium through which you can build friendships, build relationships, have community. It's one of the main values, the principles of like why I do what I do is like to connect people, right?

That's what board games do. And it's amazing. And so to be able to really make that true in reality, not just in principle, is an important. mission and and I think often about why I am able to do what I do and what led me go on this path and it's because I had like role models. I had people that I saw go down these paths that were kind of like me and that made it clear that I could do that. And so it's where it's the importance of having role models for people that, you know, look like all the people that all out there, whether it's, you know, women or people color or whatever to show that no, no, if you

want to be a game designer, you could be a game designer. If you want to be welcome these environments, you could be welcomed these environments. I think that's just a very important thing to get us to a place where, you know, we get more. I mean, frankly, even just for people, we want better awesome games, right? You don't want half the population not making awesome games. You want everybody that would be able to contribute to be able to contribute and build those communities further. And the thing I think we're going to see play out over the next decade is the question of, are we going to see actually like noticeably different games as the population of designers diversifies?

Like is it going to diversify the themes and the mechanics that we see coming out? And I think there's a chance that we, it will. And, you know, I've talked a lot about when Wingspan came out, I got a lot of emails from guys who were like, thank you for designing the only board game that my wife is willing to play with me. which I'm sure other people get too. Like I'm not saying wingspan is the, you know, the NLBL, but it was really striking to get so many of those emails.

And it does make me wonder, like, are the themes that have been perpetuated by this very narrow demographic of designers, like keeping some people out of the hobby because they're just not interested and what they see on the box covers or the, you know, the 10-second pitch of what the game is about. Right. Yeah, well, and I think there's the, you kind of alluded to this, but I think it's not just theme, but also mechanics. Yes. I have also gotten many of these emails about Ascension being a thing that couples can play together.

And it's not because the theme is like others maybe, but the mechanics are not direct attacking. They're not in the same kind of way, right? I can play my game and do my thing. in a deck builder more so than I can in like magic, right? A game where like, you know, I'm destroying your lands and taking your, killing your creatures and stopping you from doing what you want to do. And so there's, there are even elements of the mechanics that is this a social play experience, is this a collaborative play experience?

Is this a, you know, competitive, but still, you know, one where you're able to build rather than destroy are all like factors that really can make a big difference in what type of people are interested and drawn to a game. And so I do think it's worth thinking about on both sides, like what's going to draw it and what are your norms growing up, right? You can't help but be influenced by the things that, you know, brought you to where you are today, whether that's sort of cultural norms or the gameplay norms, right? Like my games are all inspired by magic because magic was my radioactive spider bite,

as Richard Garfield put it. It was a thing that got me into, like, really loving games and thinking about games. So every one of my games has a piece of magic in it, for sure, right? as well, yours, I'm sure, the things you loved in hearts and spades and the things that you've built in, you know, that kind of set collection stuff from what you've done with and birdwatching. All that stuff just informs what you do. And so I think it's a very real thing that having more people from more diverse backgrounds will diversify games mechanically, thematically, and add a ton. And it's great because once you've done that, once you've broken that mold, now other people can start borrowing and building on top of what you've done and other things. And I think that's what the industry is.

And I think it'll grow the whole industry if we do that too, right? Like the more diverse games are, the more different types of people will be interested in them and will come in. Yeah. So people see it as this like, you're saying that we have to diversify. That's got somehow like picking and choosing people. And I'm like, no, like keep everyone we've got and just grow.

Yeah, yeah. That's where I think it's important to frame it in the right sort of way. It's not like I want to have a women designer therefore I won't have a guy designer. Like that's not how this works. It's we want to be more inclusive of all types and encourage all types of designers from whatever backgrounds. And that, yeah, it helps everybody. It's a rising tide kind of situation. I think it's just obviously this is a very contentious issue for a lot of people and it can be very, very hot button. But I think the basics of this, like everyone should be supportive.

of regardless of your background. Like it's just it's going to make the world a better place for all of us and make gaming a better growing, you know, continuously growing community. So one of the other things is we sort of talk about community, you know, and we've talked about your process at getting to pitch at conventions and getting together for weekly game nights. And, and, you know, of course, COVID has upended the Apple Card on all of these things. And it's forced all of us to adapt. Now, hopefully we're, you know, we're starting to see the the end of this, at least in the U.S. and some transitions, but this isn't going away. And also, you know, I found, and some of my other guests, we found that there are some actual upsides and things that we've learned through COVID on how we can interact and build

community digitally or do our work digitally or create. And I'm curious if there's anything from your side that has been lessons learned or new practices or things that maybe will stick with you post-COVID or that people could be adopting. No. Nope, all downside. Fair enough. I hated it. I got nothing done. I did a lot of the content research for wingspan.

So like pulling all of the data for the cards for the next like three expansions all at once. Sure. But online playtesting, I will suffer through to help other people. But only rarely and I really dislike it for my games. I really, so the things, the lessons learned were things like, tactility is very important to me as a gamer. Mm-hmm. And it's something that I think more consciously about now

in terms of like how that is present in my games. Right. It made me realize that when I'm running playtests, I would say maybe about 50% of the feedback that I take in has nothing to do with what is coming out of people's mouths. Yes. And that is entirely lost in online playtesting. I can't see people's faces or body language or how, like, not even really how things are moving on the table because things are just so stupid in terms of like if you have to pick up 10 cubes and you have to do. You can't even tell what things are actually fiddly, right?

Yep. So, yeah, I realized how much watching is part of my process. Yes. In a way that meant that I was just completely shaming. And especially on wingspin, they did a beautiful job with the Steam version of online wingspan, and that is playable. But to me, in Tabletop Simulator, Wingspan is not playable, because the text on the cards is so small that you are just constantly zooming in and out

and you can't hold the whole thing in your head at once and it's it's just i couldn't do it yeah yeah i i i totally understand that frustration and i i had to force myself to power through it for uh for our game we did you know in part i just had the luxury of not having to yeah no that's that's that's that's right and now i i've actually i've actually gotten to the point where i actually actually like it for there obviously for the physicality stuff you still do need to test, you know, in in the physical world. But I've gotten the speed with which I can iterate and test digitally is dramatically faster than I was ever able to, you know, all the print out on the cards and write on the cards and cut and sleeve. And, you know,

that's our, I know, it's our whole life for the longest time. And I haven't done that in a year now. Right. I don't miss that. I'll tell you that right now. To me, there's a certain, like, artsy craftiness to that that. that I don't actually mind. Except when I'm doing 170 cards at once. I gave up on sleeping wingspan when I was testing. Now I understand why you did the 18 card game. So I wanted to highlight just a couple points from what you were talking about here

because it's not the idea of like 50% of your feedback is nonverbal is really important. Like it's so much of what play churches will tell you. you is not the truth. I mean, they think, you know, they're trying, they're not trying to lie to you, but you could see when somebody's like at the edge of their seat, like into the action versus like distracted and leaning back or smiling or just like, you know, a lost in thought. And, and that confused. Yes, confused is a really important. Yes. Yes, that is that is key. And learning and and as a designer, training yourself to be looking for those things and noticing those things is absolutely critical. Like your playtests are as much about you being able to build up those

instincts and get better at noting when people are having trouble in things and catching it earlier, then it is just the specifics of your game. It's really, really valuable. And as I recall, I think you spent a lot of time doing solo kind of play tests for your games even before they see the light of day for others, right? Is that still the case? And how do you structure those for your, you know, to be most effective? Yeah, I usually just play a two-player game against myself. Who wins? Yeah,

it's usually, if it's a blowout, that's usually a sign that there's something wrong, right? Okay, I like that. Yeah. But mostly I'm just like, just wanting to get a feel for whether things even work, and I'll see a lot of things that I can change before I inflict it on someone else.

Yeah. So it's more just, a way to save the goodwill of my playtesters a little bit than anything else. Sure. Yeah, that's that's right.

So you've built, because you said you have a weekly playtest group and, and yeah, there's this interesting thing. If you're giving them like raw, terrible games all the time, like they're not going to come over anymore.

You know, they're just doing this. You've got to balance it out. I'll often, I'll often build a game night with like some games that I know are good and like, you know, either or other release games with then,

okay, this one's a little experimental. this one's a little raw, here you go. This is all other designers, my weekly group. So there's a pretty high tolerance for like, I have no idea what this is, but let's see what we think. Yeah, that's the other thing that really helps if you have a sophisticated playtest group for your early prototypes, right?

Like, you know, when you get later in this process, you want to widen that net and have lots of, you know, but people will get so distracted by the fact that the templating is wrong and this thing's not balanced and these numbers are wrong. you're like, I'm not caring about those things. This is too early. I want to, is this fun? What's happening here?

Does this work at all? And designers, other designers or aspiring designers can be better at that. And that's actually also been one of the benefits of the pandemic. In some sense for me is that I've been able to like build those communities online and have a bunch of people that are all working on games at the same time to to have regular desk groups. So for people that are not lucky enough to be locally near other designers, there's, there's, there's opportunities as well.

But there's no, there's no replacement for. sitting around the table with some other designers to work through problems. Yeah, it's definitely a luxury of being here in the DC area that there's sort of a critical mass of folks to work with other designers. So the other thing I wanted to key off of from your previous comments was that, you know, you're like how important tactile responses were as a game or the tactility of a game and how important that is to you. and to everybody, you know, to lots of people. So how do you think about that at what point in their process are you thinking about tactile elements, right? I mean, Wingspan has all of these really cool, you know, things that you get to play with and see.

And is it, was that there from early on? Was that something that got added later by the publisher? Was it, do your design start with that as a major concern? Or how do you think about incorporating that into your own designs? Yeah, that's a good question. Wingspan was up and down in terms of whether food would come from dice or cards. And dice are just more fun. Sure.

And more tactile. So that's one example. The eggs through the entire playtesting process were just poker chips. But poker chips are satisfying enough. It's the same. Like, you know, you're moving stuff around. You're getting physical objects that are yours that are like a little dopamine hit, right? I got some stuff.

Yeah, so the eggs were definitely always once they entered the game, we're always a satisfying part of it, I feel like. Yeah. So we had a funny, tactile story for Ascension. When I took it, we were just, you know, using regular little carb tokens. We had around to count honor points and, you know, victory points for the game.

And then when we went to Gamma to pitch the game, we didn't have, we like, oh, we have to have something to count that's nicer than these. And so just went to like Michaels and picked up the little beads that you use in like fish tanks, you know. Well, this will be fine. These are cool. And we'll just use them for the testing here. And everybody that came by was like, oh, my God, these are amazing. Do these come in the game? This is so great.

And we're like, yes, yes, they do. We got to figure out where do we find these. These are really heavy. Oh, man. We had to find a factory that made them and get them shipped to the printer. But people loved it. And I've made this mistake on the other side enough times where I note that tactile is important. But when I start, it's all mechanics.

It's all like the kind of crunchy bits. And I don't think. And so then I now have tried to make checkpoints earlier and early in the process to be like, no, no, no. What's this going to feel like? And once this is in front of you, how do I test it? So it's closer to the real feeling. And then what's that going to drive?

You know, like our, we did a, the Shards of Infinity is another deck building game I did. And we had these character dials that tracked your health and your like mastery rating. And we just used dice to track it throughout most of the playtest process. And once you had this character in front of you with big art and a big thing, the drive of personifying it and wanting it to have special powers that were unique and that things was so much stronger. And it was too late in the processing of set one for us to add. that in. We were already kind of too far down. We already had the stuff in hand. So we were, we added it in the expansion. But if I had been smart enough to make that close to real

looking prototype before it was too late, I would have, the physicality of that piece would have driven the design in a different way. So I always encourage you to test earlier. And it's a lesson I've had to learn the hard way a couple of times. So, yeah, we're running low on time, but I have really enjoyed this conversation. I'm going to want to, I'm going to want to bring you back for a part two, I'm sure, at some point, or maybe if we actually make it to Jen Con, we can do another fun panel there. But before we go, I'd love to, if we want to direct people to things that you're doing, if they want to find out more about you or play more of your games or all the good things,

where should they go? I have a website that is elizhargrave.com. I don't write out my whole first name because that along with Hargrave is just long. So, ELI-Z, Hargrave. And there you can sign up. I have like a mailing list, which is very infrequent, but like we're about to do at Kickstarter for a little expansion for Tessi-Messi. And I'll probably send something out for that. So it'll be, you know, it's that kind of little updates on something's coming out or just every now and then.

I'm pretty active on Twitter, so that's another good place for people to interact with me. So that's also at Elis Hargrave. And then there's Facebook groups for mariposes and wingspan if people want to. Man, the wingspan group has like over 10,000 people in it. It's great. You will have a feed full of beautiful bird pictures and arguments about strategy. Okay. You got plenty of content out there for wingspan lovers.

And yeah, that's great. All right. Well, I wish you the best luck with the upcoming Kickstarter and all the great games. and I look forward to a face-to-face meeting of some kind when that becomes possible so we could get together, hopefully a check-cott this year. Sounds good. Thanks so much. Thank you. Thank you so much for listening.

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