Think Like A Game Designer - Michael Borys — The Art of Immersive Gaming Experiences, Blending Storytelling with Interactive Design, and Crafting Alternate Realities (#55)

Episode Date: December 5, 2023

Michael Borys stands out in the game design landscape for his exceptional blend of interactive design expertise and storytelling prowess. He has worked on some of the world's biggest brands, including Disney, Warner Brothers, Microsoft, Activision, Paramount, and Sony. As Vice President of Interaction Design at 42 Entertainment, he led the creation of groundbreaking experiences, earning consecutive Cannes Lions Grand Prix Awards for his innovative Alternate Reality Games. These games, which spanned franchises like Batman and Call of Duty, engaged millions globally. Michael's work covers various mediums, from theme park attractions to cutting-edge augmented reality and location-based entertainment projects. Beyond his design career, Michael is a magician member of The Magic Castle in Hollywood. He is celebrated for his immersive show “The 49 Boxes,” which has captivated audiences across the United States. Borys' dedication to authenticity, magic, and history, combined with his love for storytelling, imbues his creations with a truly unbelievable level of immersion. His newest experience is a tabletop game called The Arkham Asylum Files for the company Infinite Rabbit Holes. Having him share his insights and experiences on the Think Like A Game Designer Podcast was a privilege. 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. In today's episode, I have a magical conversation with Michael Boris. And when I say magical, I mean that quite literally. In addition to being award-winning designer and a senior VP of interactive design at the Animal Repair Shop. Michael is a magician, and he actually has a residency at the Magic Castle in L.A. I'm very excited to go see him there.

He has worked with Disney, Warner Brothers, Microsoft, Activision, Paramount, Sony. He's worked with the Batman brand. He creates interactive experiences for live events, as well as some pretty imaginative virtual reality or augmented reality-style games that you can play at home. So this was a super fun, really cool conversation. Michael really charmed me with his incredible storytelling ability and his great insight into what makes incredible experiences for people.

He actually walks you through one of his more famous experiences that he's created here on the program. I really loved it. I felt like a great instant connection. I'd never met him before this call. So it was a wonderful thing to get to dive into some of the work that he's done and his insights into design, into crafting experiences, into games and how these things all interrelate.

So I will let that stand where it is. I guarantee you're going to love this conversation. It was really wonderful, and I'm looking forward to being able to follow up with him. But without any further ado, here is Michael Boris. Hello and welcome. I am here with Michael Boris. Michael, I'm so excited to get to talk with you today.

I'm excited too, Jess, Justin. This is going to be great. Yeah, so, you know, a lot, we have probably in the majority the designers I have on this podcast are probably tabletop designers. We have a lot of video game designers. And we've had very few that fall into your category. How would you describe the types of experiences that you create? Well, I think that I might be a bit of a unicorn because we've done an awful lot of live, immersive experiences as well as digital. And so there's sort of like a, we're walking a tightrope between both of those things and where we like to say that we use the world as a

platform. We're pretty comfortable with designing games and finding gameplay, even hidden in architecture that's already been around us for hundreds of years. So we're very comfortable with seeing things, I think, differently. I think that's what differentiates us from a lot of designers. Yeah, yeah. And so we've had people in the podcast like Jordan Weissman who kind of founded this, alternate reality game genre in many senses. And we've had Mike Selinker was one of our first guests who's done a lot of these live interactive experiences. But we haven't spent a ton of time deep diving into it.

And I know you also have a background in magic, I believe, which I'm super excited to dig into. So maybe let's just, before we get too deep into it, let's go into your origin story. I always like to know what's the kind of radioactive spider bite that gets you going down this path. And especially with yours, which has such sort of unique interactive design. How did you get started? How did you kind of get into this job? Well, I grew up in Detroit, and my parents were collectors of weird and wonderful things. And so growing up, I always enjoyed putting those things to good use and sort of writing little

stories and interactivities around objects that you wouldn't think would be interactive. And I always say that objects have power, and they have the power that you infuse in them. It might be the history that actually exists with them. Or it might be the history that you've created for them. And then moving forward, that is the history of those objects. And so I have a fine arts degree from Wayne State University in Detroit where really we focused an awful lot on automotive. And I realized after working in AutoCAD for a very short amount of time that that was kind of boring. For me, I just didn't like it.

I felt like I was doing the same thing over and over again. And so I moved to Los Angeles. And it just so happened to be at the exact right time. because the internet was just sort of exploding. And they were sort of just saying, well, hey, you've got a degree. You have a creative spirit. Come on in. We're going to train you on some things that we don't even know what this future is going to be.

Just create. And so along with some like-minded folks, who I still work with today, like Alex Liu and Johnny Rodriguez, literally from 1996 to now, it's the same guys that I met at Disney where we were doing the first online content for Disney, the first. interactive video games, the first interactive stories. And heck, we went to think about this. I was going from animated gifts all of a sudden using Flash and doing things that we could never do before. And because we were doing what was cutting edge for the web,

that's why we got invited to the table for like a lot of imaginering meetings and got to talk about theme, you know, park and how gamification can happen within rides. We got really lucky to be trained in an area. that nobody knew what was going on. And so after working at Disney and sort of cutting our teeth on telling story, which is really what we like to do more than anything, I went to Warner Brothers, where I was there, senior game designer for mobile and web.

And we did, I think, 70 plus games over the two years that I was there. And that was fantastic. I felt like every job that I've ever had, I didn't deserve being there until a year or two after being there. But nobody could have said that. that before they hired me because the thing didn't exist before we did the thing, if that makes sense. Yeah, yeah, you're at the cutting edge, so you have the most experience. It's sort of like how I feel now with all the AI experts out there where it's like, it's so new. Everybody, if you've

done it for two months, you're an expert now. So it's pretty interesting. You're absolutely right about that, you know. And so after working Warner, I worked at, you know, Nickelodeon to try my hand and doing some background design and painting. And though I liked it, it wasn't as fun as the interactive. And that is when the same team that I started working with at Disney introduced me to Jordan Wiseman, who you mentioned before. And Alon Lee, who started 42 Entertainment, who created the first ARGs. Like they did, you know, what was it called The Beast for Stephen Spielberg's AI. And I fell in love with that as a new medium, an art form of, you know, we don't think of it as marketing at all because it is its own platform.

It is its own storytelling mechanism where to me, a lot of times the story can be more robust than the movie that you're going to go see. And so that's where we really, really fell into this beautiful story. spiral of learning and being able to explore and yet a new platform where we did the why so serious campaign for The Dark Night and Flynn lives the campaign, a year and a half long campaign for the new Tron movie. I just felt like it was just a constant learning exercise where we got to spread our wings and do something that no one else was done, but we were trusted because of the project that we did in the past. Wow, okay, that's an impressive. I'd love.

less than five minute encapsulation of an incredible career. I normally, well, I'm going to cut and go back because there's a lot of things I want to unpack from there. But really incredible, impressive, obviously huge brands, huge impacts. And I love, you know, kind of what you talked about, you know, you're sort of on the cutting edge and therefore you're not qualified, but nobody else is. So, you know, you're kind of moving forward. Like, what do you think either gave you that mindset?

that, you know, what was that like, especially when you're kind of first jumping in, right? You're first going from in L.A. and going to work for Disney. Like, how do you open that door even in the first place? That's a great question, Justin. The door opening, you know, some of it can be luck. Some of it can be one little nugget that's in a portfolio that is different from, I think, what other people have that make them think, well, okay, this guy thinks a little bit differently. It's timing, of course. And in my case, I was lucky enough to know somebody who happened to have gotten a job two weeks before I moved out. And it was my roommate who was the brother of a friend who just so happened to also be a creative, who trusted in me.

And the truth is, Justin, when I first applied to Disney, I wasn't accepted. And so I went back. I looked at the portfolio of my friend that was accepted and mimicked the unique things that he did. Okay, so he had two logos. He had a show concept. He had illustrations of classic Disney characters and classic Warner Brothers characters. And I sort of not copied his work, but copied the format, went back, interviewed with another group, and then got the job because I understood. format. I think it was about knowing what it was that was going to sell me to the place that I wanted

to be in the first place. And then after that, my work just sort of spoke for itself moving forward. Yeah, that's great. So, yeah, the spiral effect that happens at this sort of virtuous cycle of once you've started to do good work, you can use that to leverage trust to do more work. And that makes sense, but I love the little bits there, right? Obviously, you know, everyone that's successful, if you don't acknowledge that, you know, luck and timing are a part of it, then you're diluting yourself or everybody else. So it's, it's great to acknowledge it. But there's these little things that you can do to make luck more likely, right? You can set yourself up for luck. And this process of modeling success is one of the simplest formulas, right? You found your friend that had did it and got in,

and you saw what they were like. And I imagine that you're applying this as well. I'd love to, maybe is a way to do this, but correct me if I'm wrong, but you apply this when you move into a new design genre too, right? If I'm going to design a new category of game or you're doing new things for the web, you can model a format of something that you've seen in another genre or that's similar in category and bring it over. Is that, you know, when you're sort of pushing those boundaries

and starting to just, you know, at the core of it, you're telling stories no matter what you're doing, how do you think about that when you push to, and you can pick any example from history, where you're pushing to web, when you're pushing to mobile, Like where do you when you approach a new medium, how do you kind of work your way through it? I think to create something new, I mean, of course you're looking at everything that came before you and you're studying the new thing that you're going to be doing and seeing everything that was built.

And there's no question that you're taking a little bit of the seasoning from here and there to bake your whatever your new recipe is going to be. it's life and its experience and it's constantly looking and researching and and and as long as you have the new unique story even if you're trying to mimic something exactly you can't help but make a new a new beast at the end because I think it's very very difficult to copy if you wanted to but as long as you're looking at everything in the world you know you're going to come up with something wonderful, I think. Right, yeah.

Pulling the best from what's out there and, you know, bringing your, you can't help but bring your own personality, creativity and, you know, kind of expression through the work that you do. I'm really, so is all of the brands, I mean, you mentioned a lot of huge brands and huge things. Have you worked exclusively on kind of pre-existing brands and IP? Have you built your own IP? Like, how do you think about those and how do you, when you're experienced? expressing like the world of Disney versus the world of Batman in a new medium.

How do you approach that versus maybe something smaller or something that you've created? Well, you know, when you're working at Disney or Warner Brothers, there's an agenda, right? Like when I first started at Warner Brothers, it was all about the new Looney Tunes push that they were doing for a, it was MBA jam. I think that was the movie for that. And so all of a sudden, everything in my life was was was all loony tunes all day, every day. And then it was Harry Potter. And so it was a year of nothing but designing those games. It's not like they were saying, Michael, what are the beautiful stories you want to tell?

And what's the amazing IP you want to bring to the world? So you had to do what they wanted you to do. Now, in spare time, yes, constantly, stories are being written and experiences are being created. And so there's one that I'd love to talk about, and it's called the 49 boxes. It's a, I was invited to an underground magic community experience called Beyond Brookledge. Now, Brookledge is a vaudevillian society within Los Angeles where magicians from around the world, they come together, and they put on between a one to three day experience where everybody gets 15 minutes in the spotlight where they perform for each other. It might be tap dancing. It might be singing.

it might be comedy. It might be the best magic you've ever seen. But whatever it is, if you slept for one of those hours during those three days, you've missed something remarkable. And so I was invited to this three-day gala where I was witnessing things I didn't even know existed in the world by who are the movers and shakers of the magic world, including like the pen and tellers of the world and magic, etc. Dick Van Dyke might do a Vodvillian show at this party. And after the experience, I was sat down by the people that ran the experience. And they said, hey, what do you think? And, of course, I'm in tears because it's just amazing.

And they said, well, we didn't bring you here for three days just to have you have a good show. We want you to do something next year, if you don't mind, because we know what you do for a living. And so for that next, the next 11 months, I would work my day job with Alex and Johnny and Susan Bonds at 42 Entertainment at that point. And by night, I worked to create this immersive experience, which was called 49 boxes. And what it is, essentially, is an immersive experience that 49 people can partake in where impossible artifacts from the last 100 years are locked in boxes waiting to be unlocked. And they all fit together kind of like a Rube Goldbergian puzzle mechanic, if that makes sense. And as people, so think of it as one of the first room escapes.

that ever existed, but it's happening with 49 people simultaneously opening things up and then putting things together and learning story. I will tell, along with my creative partner Alex Liu, the beginning part of the story on stage, and then it's everybody open your boxes and it's time to explore. And impossible, magical things are happening in people's hands and they're solving puzzles that are meant to be solved within an hour and a half. And then at the end of the experience, a lockbox with 19 locks on it from around the world are unlocked and the final chapter is revealed to the players. There is no lose state. It is just sheer joy. And that was the most exciting side project that I've ever done that became our brand. And we just assumed that we wouldn't be invited back again because we were in this like weird, you know, secret collective of creatives that we don't belong.

because we don't have a Vegas show, but what wound up happening was it became sort of the darling of the experience, and we were invited back. And so since then, we've designed many versions of the Fordham boxes, and it's traveled around the country, and now there's a sort of a hands-on little museum in my garage right now, my garage studio that is used as a teaching tool for schools now and students so that they can learn how story can be wrapped around any objects,

and truly objects have power with this. I know that without these things being in front of you, Justin, it's kind of hard to swallow, but I hope that that made sense. Oh, it definitely made sense. You've, I mean, you're a fantastic storyteller. I am hooked. I want these boxes in my hands. And I think you're based out in L.A.

I'm going to be out there in a few weeks. So I may come by to be able to get a sense of this. I really, yeah, I am. So I want to get into a little bit about that, if you don't mind, I don't know if this magician revealing his tricks, but I want to get into a little bit of the details about how this thing got created. Because I have had Elon and Jordan and others on the podcast. And we've talked about a lot of these alternate reality games and how we built them.

And a lot of times when they're built, you know, they're sort of they're done online for massive audiences. And there's a lot of, there's a lot of kind of wiggle room and kind of behind the scenes cheats that are available to you. This doesn't sound like that's the case, right? So, you know, you have, everything is getting solved in an hour and a half. You have a kickoff moment, but otherwise, it's sort of in individual people's hands and you need it to kind of play out in a certain way. So it feels like there's a lot of challenges that come with this. And is it?

So I'd love to like, you know, if it's designing a box, walk me through it, or if it's, how do you, how do you think about that kind of challenge? Like, I'm fascinated by these details. Well, I'll tell you this. You know, working with Jordan Wiseman and Alon Lee for the few years. that we got a chance to work together. I learned a lot from them, you know. And it was one thing that we learned about,

and it's designing contingencies into everything. If you're doing a live event, for example, and you have a hot air balloon experience, what happens when you have record winds that do not allow the hot air balloons to go up, but you need an event to happen, you know? And so we always have a back pocket solution to things, just in case, you just don't know.

Plus, what I didn't mention is that Alex Liu and myself, who are both pretty good with our hands, and we know the story, we know all the interactive experiences and all the puzzle answers. We walk around as shepherds. We are essentially the hint system that is a drip feeding information on a need-to-know basis. But we're always doing it from the standpoint of we're learning as the people are learning, if that makes sense. So that it doesn't seem like we're, you know, omniscient gods. We don't know. We've never seen these things because no one's ever seen these before, as well as us.

And so that is how we handle the live experience. Something like the product that actually we're working on that we just finished right now, there is a built-in hint system like you would have in a video game that gives you progressively more obvious hints that gets you to the answer without giving the answer. That's the, that's really the secret behind that. Yeah, that makes that makes that makes. a ton of sense. That makes a ton of sense. When you literally have a thousand objects, keys, boxes, pieces of paper, things have to be noodleed that are working simultaneously. You're walking

several tightropes at one time because you can't be everywhere at all times. No show is the same from one to the other. And it's an interesting thing, you know, to, well, people say, well, how do you categorize something from difficult to easy? Well, the truth is, it depends on who's looking at a thing because if I don't speak Italian and I'm looking at something that requires that, I'm going to have a lot more difficulty than someone who is native, you know, to Italy, right? It depends on what knowledge you have before you've come to the experience. It's that who wants to be, it's that slumdog millionaire paradox, right? Where, you know, anybody can win the million dollars if you're lucky enough, right? Yeah. And for those that I haven't seen the movie,

it's a, you know, basically there's some unique background traits of the protagonist that give them the answer to some puzzles that they wouldn't otherwise have. So, yeah, that makes sense. I think that the, yeah, that idea of having kind of contingencies, that idea of having like layers that you can reveal and or not depending on your audience, I think is really critical. I think anybody that's played in the escape room, you know, they're super popular now. It has had this experience. You know, there's some people like Elon who are super,

committed and very escape room officinados. They don't want hints. They want to speed run the thing. They want to get it done. And then there's other people like when I go with my family where, oh my goodness, do we need all the hints we can get because it is a painful mess in there. And so being able to cater to that is key.

Yeah. And you know, one thing Justin is that the one thing I learned with the thing that those guys, Jordan and Alon pointed me to that I never knew existed, was what's called the MIT Puzzle Hunt. and that is a group of geniuses who have created a puzzle hunt for a group of geniuses. And they're sort of flexing their intelligence muscles to each other.

And it might take three full days to finish this thing. And it might take a team of 30 people who are working around the clock, taking breaks to sleep maybe one hour every day. And I was fascinated by this in the mechanisms because that was the closest thing to the first args that ever existed. And so when we were looking at those things, we were saying, well, how do you take that magic, but make it consumable for anybody? How do we make everybody feel really smart? And how do we make something doable for people within the hour and a half, like you said? And so it's not about creating puzzles that are so darn difficult that it's going

to take 10 people to do it. We're working with people, like a dance, right? We want people to trust us. We want people to feel smart. And there's atrophy in puzzle solving if people aren't solving quick enough, right? We often will get hired by a client where they'll say, our people are very, very smart. There's the smartest in the world. They want to be challenged. Make these as difficult as possible. Whenever we listen to that, there's a little bit of a backfire that happens because people want the other side. They want more, more meaningful, And they want to feel smart. I hope that makes sense, Justin.

Oh, it does. I mean, it's one of the biggest challenges of game design, generally speaking, right? You want to find that sweet spot of challenge where people feel that challenge. They feel that tension. They feel this strain of, oh, my God, maybe I can't do this. And then cross over into the joy of, I figured it out, I've won, I've unlocked the puzzle. I've got that, you know, that moment when you break through. the resistance is magical, right?

So something we look for in our lives across the spectrum. And if it's too easy, right, then there's no magic to it. It's just, okay, whatever, I've solved it. And if it's too hard and you're stuck, it's a terrible frustration. And so balancing your experience around your audience and figuring out how to do that well is really one of the primary art forms of any game medium, frankly. Yeah, there's nothing better than that aha moment that is meaningful, that elevates things, for sure.

I really, really like that. And really, when it takes two or three people, let's say, for a room escape game that you have in your house, let's say, or a real room escape, I love when it absolutely depends on three people working together to do a thing because it's not a self-high-five. You know, it's not patting yourself on the back, but I love the collaborative nature of games of what it could be. And that's exactly what we've been designing for, you know, lately in the last couple of years, is that I want it to be, you know, personal. if possible, I want it to be empowering, but I want it to be community-based for sure. Yeah, personal, empowering, and then, yeah, connecting. I think those are great goals for design and a powerful vision for, I guess, what you're doing with your creative life more broadly. So I'm excited to dig into this in a few different areas. We may come back to augmented reality

games and these kinds of puzzles, but you've mentioned that you work. on kind of theme park design as well as part of this. Is that, did I get that right? Yes, when we were at Disney Online, because we became less and less of a red-headed stepchild of a business unit, other business units realized the need for online presence and the need for maybe even an online experience that ties in with a live experience at the park. So when you're thinking of, if you remember Virtual Magic Kingdom as an example, there

There was a trading card game that we worked on that was delivered only through Tomorrowland at Disney, at the Disney theme park that tied in all the parks and things like that. That tied into, if you remember, Habo Hotel, that game would go through and be community, have a community online and build their rooms. It was so you're reminding me of Animal Crossing without the chores where you can build your own space and it was, you know, Disney theme and things like that. And then so it started with very light ties to the theme parts. Now, when we go to the project that we did for the Tron legacy campaign that we did, it was a year and a half long campaign for Flynn Lives. When we went to Comic-Con, I don't know what the experience is, Justin, but we recreated Sam Flynn's Flins Arcade that was at Comic-Con.

Yes, I remember seeing that. That's right. That's cool. And if you remember that, it was like a brick-for-brick. like recreation of what was in the original Tron movie and with playable video games, including space paranoid games that Sam Flynn actually had created. And we extrapolated from 10 seconds of gameplay that was created on a non-existent game from Tron and made a real game that could play in a stand-up arcade cabinet.

Every five levels, you would be given a QR code, or you could scan with your phone and then be given pontifications from beyond, you know, of Sam Flynn and the grid about the state of the world and technology and things like that. And here he was talking, you know, from, you know, from the from beyond, which is interesting. Now, every 10 minutes, if you remember, the lights would go down, the, the, the, and a wall would open up where a try machine would be pulled aside and people get to go through and either see a life-size light cycle or the Shiva laser that shrunk, that shrunk and brought Sam Flynn into the computer system and to the grid.

And then eventually people got to go into a giant end of the line club where you would see a 40-foot LED wall where they could show trailers and have interviews and things like that. It was a very, very immersive thing that would happen, impossibly so at the Comic-Con where the players themselves unlocked it via a scavenger hunt. So when the Imagineers, when Tony Baxter and the Imagineer saw that, they saw value in that beyond Comic-Con, they took that thing piece by piece and rebuilt it in California adventure. And there it stayed for a half a year to drive traffic and also keep people on the park longer. And so there was a version of the online or the end of line club that we created and Flynn's Arcade.

That's a great example, I think, of immersion that turned into a theme park attraction that brought more immersion. Yeah, that's incredible. What an amazing project to get to work on and build. How much time did you spend putting all of that together? I mean, sounds such an epic thing that, again, I mean, eventually it became an attraction, but it was entirely a marketing project, right? It wasn't itself monetized. It was designed to bring attention to the movie exclusively at the beginning.

Is that right? That's exactly right. But I can't say that they didn't figure out how to monetize it because all the video games that were playable in that arcade were playable via tokens that people could buy that were tron themed and there were six or seven different tokens that we designed for those and so because of all the traffic that went in there because who doesn't like an arcade especially a retro arcade they actually I think that they did pretty well with that so you're you were asking about how much work we did on that I'll say we did all the work on it because it was online puzzles it was printed puzzles it was

physical location experiences you know with dead drops of you know Velcro truce wallets that have information and trading cards from the 1980s that players would scan, put online, and it would unlock content for the world because that's the way ours work. Because I lived through that movie and that whole, that was more of my favorite movies growing up, it was such a fun thing to create new experiences and new ways of using light cycles and recognizers from that world to create interactivity, both online and, you know, virtual space and of course those physical places. The same thing with Alex and Johnny.

I mean, we just were in Hogg Heaven. That's all we did. We lived that for a year and a half. That is, yeah, that sounds like an amazing dream come true. I know when I first started working in game design, I was working on Marvel and DC Comics trading card game.

And it was like this, you know, this just really cool experience for me. I grew up reading these comics and now I get to decide, you know, you would always talk as a kid, who wins in a fight, you know,

Batman or, you know, or Wolverine. And it's like, okay, well, now I'm going to figure it out. I'm going to make them fight. And let's go. You're blessed, right? You realize you're blessed as it's happening, right?

Yeah. Yeah, it's a wonderful thing. And, you know, there's all these different, as far I kind of alluded to earlier, there's these sort of different incredible opportunities as well as challenges that come when you're working with these iconic IP, right? Like, so, you know, I would love, you know, if there's any specific stories that come to mind for you, I'd love to hear them. But this, you know, okay, we have to live up to all of these expectations.

that people have of this is what Tron is like. This is what the experiences are supposed to be. This is how it was. So you're in sense having to play inside this box and creativity breeds constraints. So there's tons of room to do that. But working with IP like that carries a lot of weight to it as opposed to when you're kind of building your own thing and you can mix and match and you're sort of setting up the expectations as you go.

Are there, you know, whether there's a story around like what that initial brainstorming and design was like for be it the Tron project or something else that comes to mind, or where you felt the kind of interesting tension of being true to the constraints versus creating a new experience on your own? One of the most important things for us in game design is letting the players feel like they are citizens of whatever the experiences that we're playing.

And so, for example, for The Dark Night, when we were telling the year and a half long story for Christopher Nolan's movies between the first and the second movie, we wanted people to step inside Gotham, to touch Gotham, and to actually become citizens. I mean, heck, during the experience, they actually got voter ID cards, and they got an address for Gotham City so they can actually see in a map that they would build over time exactly where they lived in Gotham. And one of my favorite experiences that spilled out into the real world that gave people agency and control of the

situation was this experience that dealt with cakes across the country. So it all started with a really simple experience online. You know, carnivals where you have a hammer and you try to swing it as hard as you can at a base that drives a lead bit up to hit a bell. Well, we did that online so that no matter what, you would win every time. And over the course of the day, you'd win different types of stuffed animals. But not just any stuffed animals. These were treated by the Joker. It's like they were driven over by a car. They were stained. They were oily. And even stuffing was coming out. And if you could click the little note that was inside the stuffing and it would give you a GPS coordinate without any much instructions except go to this location, go inside the building

that's in those locations, and ask for a package that's there for you and say that your name is Robin Banks, which is pretty funny, actually. Love it. And so over the course of the day, these players would race to these random locations. And if they couldn't get to those locations, they would call their friends who, weren't on the website going, look, do this on my behalf. And so they became the experience as foot soldiers to spread the word of what this thing was. And there was just a fever at this time. And so imagine the players realizing, hey, there's a pattern here with these GPS locations. These are actually bakeries across the country. And when the players would go in there,

they might go in there. And if you can think of like a three Stooges show, where all three are trying to get to the door, but they can't because they're going through at the same time. It was like that with the players. There were so many people going that it was difficult to decide who was there first. But whoever was there first got the honor of saying, I'm Robin Banks, and there is a package for me. And so the guy behind the counter would give them the cake that they had made. And the cake had this gaudy clown decorations on it and in red frosting a phone number. And then they would take the cake outside or to their car, along with the friends and all the other people that had been there,

who weren't necessarily winners but are still in Gotham and are still Joker's henchmen, they dial that phone number and the cake starts ringing. It starts buzzing frantically. And what do you do at that point? Well, of course, everybody dives their hands into the cake because clearly there's something in it that's very, very important. And inside is a plastic evidence bag.

And the plastic Gotham City police evidence bag has a cell phone that belonged to the Joker and a note from the Joker and a card from the Joker, and a card from the Joker. And the note says, keep this with you at all times and charge because you never know when you're going to call. And if you remember that movie,

this is a direct reference to a moment where the stomach of one of the people in Gotham City was ringing, and it was a phone that was inside, if you remember. And so after reading the script, this is where the idea came from. And I remember being in the office when we came up with the idea.

At any rate, over the course of the year and a half, that phone would indeed ring and it would be the joker having the people go to different websites going to locations doing any it didn't matter what we would ask people to do they would do it because it's the joker and really because he's the agent of chaos anything is possible right and you just trust the guy for some reason and those people who had those phones would unlock content for the world that would be a new live event or it would be a new trailer that would be shown in weird places around the country and it was just fantastic. But it all comes down to that first thing that I mentioned, which is give people agency. Let them touch the world of Gotham City and they got to touch it

in a really, really special way. It is, I literally get chills hearing that story. Like it's, it's, you know, you're making people heroes or, you know, villain henchmen, I guess, but like these, they're making them the star of this incredible story that's like unfolding globally. It's just such a cool experience. It's such a cool experience. If I can add one last thing to that, it's that, you know, throughout that campaign, there were between 20 and 30 touch points in the experience that actually paid off in the movie in a very special way, that allowed players to say, hey, wait a minute, that bus that just came to that bank that was just robbed, hey, that explosion that just happened, those things

in those movies, I did that. Me and my friends did that. If it wasn't for us, that wouldn't have happened. And so they didn't even know that this payoff was going to happen until the movie came out. And doesn't that want to make you watch the movie two or three or four times even after that? It's a really special thing. Yeah. So a lot of these stories, and I think most of the ones that were also shared by Jordan, Elon, are all generally speaking, projects with huge marketing budgets that are leveraging those budgets to create these, like, massive global experiences or, you know, really cool local experiences at Comic-Con or somewhere really.

really impressive. And those are awesome. Those are amazing. But that feels, I think, in many ways, out of reach of a lot of people for the projects that they might want to do. But I've noticed a trend where creating these incredible immersive experiences is becoming more mainstream. What came to mind for me was, are you familiar with Meow Wolf and a lot of their exhibits? Of course. I mean, in Vegas, boy, is that massive scale, is it not? It's amazing. And it's exactly the kind of, when you were telling this story, I recommend for any more audience to go. They have one in Vegas,

one in Denver, one in Santa Fe that I'm aware of. I think they're building another one somewhere in Texas. But it is this weird, immersive world that you go into, and it's got all of these bizarre, quirky things going on and cool art exhibits and characters that you interact with.

But then, and like weird stuff will just happen. But then there's this sort of interactive story if you want to participate in that you can start unlocking things and moving around. And like, you end up circling back, and realizing that, you know, when the crazy things are happening,

it's somebody in the room that's doing that. And then you could be the person doing that. And the whole experience, like, transforms in your head when you now know what's happening behind the scenes and you're one of the agents of chaos. And it creates this just really magical moment. And that's just, you know, in essence, sort of just an interactive art exhibit. And it's clearly been successful because they've been growing. And, you know, I love the idea of, like, adding that magic and weirdness into the world,

you know, as a broader concept of game design experience. design and storytelling. Yeah, you know, one thing that's really important with any, whether it's an arc or whether it's just an immersive environmental thing that we do or even our product or the four-name boxes or whatever, or Meow Wolf even, there are different levels of engagement. And you set it yourself. You could just go there and just say, hey, this is a great art piece. I think this is beautiful. And then you go home and you're happy. You had a great time. Or if you choose to look closely, like you said, there are hours and hours and hours of content of a story that can unfold. And so David Cobb, he's one of the VPs at Animal Repair Shop with us, Infinite Rabbit Holes.

He says that he calls the three levels of interactivity for people. You can be a waiter, you can be a swimmer, or you can be a diver. And it makes so much sense for what it is that we're talking about. It's a really easy way to visualize, right, the different levels of interaction, waiters, swimmers, and divers. It's a beautiful way of saying it. Yeah, yeah, I like that. And so when you're designing, you're sort of consciously thinking about the experience at each of those levels. Like, what is it like for a waiter here?

What is it like for a swimmer here? What is it like for a diver here? That is exactly right. And it's important as we go that every single quadrant of whatever the experiences that we have that has all of it. So that everyone can leave with a complete experience no matter what. All right. So now let's talk about this, you know, some of your new projects here and what you're doing with this. infinite rabbit holes and it sounds like I think you've got another

kind of Batman themed game that you're at some interactive game. Let's talk about what that is and how you're building it and what's going on there. So our company is Animal Repair Shop and our gaming arm in that company is Infinite Rabbit Holes and we have a new product that just came out that we're very proud of. It's called Panic in Gotham City and it is an AR driven story experience that's meant to be participated by families and friends around the dinner table where Gotham City is brought into your house. I really feel like we took

everything that we learned from all the live events that we did for the ARGs that we did and even the interactive experiences that are magical in the 49 boxes and put it into an eight pound, eight and a half pound box of awesome. It's really, really a beautiful, rich experience. I wonder, Justin, have you had the chance to hold the box, look at the assets, actually play the game at all? Not at all. No, I was intrigued by your background and started researching, but I have not had a chance to play. But I want to. It looks amazing. I can honestly say that of all the things that we've done, we are collectively the most proud about this. And so imagine a box being opened and it has the look and the feel of an Arkham Asylum filing cabinet.

And there is an app that goes along with it that has a soundtrack that was done by a very talented musician, musical score creator named Ron Fish, who did all of the Dark Knight trilogy game music. He is just a genius. And it was designed so that it would be the first room escape in a house in your home. that never has a moment of silence in the best way possible. There is a soundtrack going for 10 hours because it's about 10 hours of gameplay. So whether you're solving a puzzle in a sewer,

it is the most tasteful music of sewer music you'd ever heard. Tasteful sewer music, classic. Oh, boy, am I going to get a kick for that. But really, the point is that whatever the soundscape that it should be for the moment of what you're doing, it's there. And it's kind of, it makes me tingle a little bit. got shivers thinking about it. The game is meant to be streamed onto your, you know, Applecast TV,

so that that soundtrack is boomed through your speakers, and one person is in charge of the app, you know, looking around the city and the city is transforming an augmented reality. So I'll give you an example of what might happen. You build a papercraft building and place it on a part of Gotham on your dinner table. You then scan it with our app, which I think is the most advanced version of augmented reality, then all of a sudden, Gotham City comes to life in full 3D with a helicopter flying around the city. And because you've built the radio broadcast building, you're actually hearing a radio broadcast from the helicopter telling you what's happening this moment in Gotham City, who the villain is, what's happening, and what you need to do,

which in this case, you're a sleuth reporter type, you know, taking pictures of giant graffiti around the city. But it makes you get up and walk around your table and look at, and interact with Gotham City in a way that really you've never done before. And so all of the expertise of the art, the puzzle design, the game design, the storytelling, the music, everything comes together in such a beautiful way. And what I would say is a Disney quality experience, but like an arg in your house where you get to step into Gotham City. And when I say step into Gotham City, there is a moment. You know, I don't want to give away too much.

but you literally spawn something in your living room, and you literally step into a room in Gotham City and interact with it in a way that you've never done before with your phone. It's crazy. It really is great. So this is a, you know, this is kind of augmented reality. So I'm looking through the camera on my phone and I'm seeing things that aren't really there that are kind of projected into my room while I'm watching it, right? This is kind of the premise of it. Yeah. So I'm interested to talk about this type of game. I mean, this, obviously, you've, you've thought a lot about this. So, you know, this technology has been around for quite a long time. I played with some of these designs early on, and I found that they, they never, you know, a Pokemon Go, of course, has got, you know, has done,

has done things like this and was very successful with having, you know, seeing your Pokemon in the world and going and capturing them. And, and there's this, again, there's this sort of balance of saying, okay, what am I getting out of this experience having augmented reality, versus being a video game versus being a tabletop game, right? You're kind of somewhere in between all of these worlds. You know, I found with a lot of these other games, where you have to hold your phone up and constantly look around, it gets kind of tiresome.

Here it sounds like you're kind of shifting between maybe solving a paper puzzle, then looking around your room for something, then moving into something else. Like how do you balance that, you know, the sort of joy of interactivity of being in a room and playing with tactile things versus the magic of what can happen from my phone? versus this kind of unlock and, you know, ambiance experience. It seems like there's a lot of pieces that you're trying to make work well together

that each present their own challenges. That's a really good question, Justin, you know, because we too have seen a lot of AR experiences. And you're right, it's been around a long time. And a lot of times it feels like, oh, it's kind of gimmicky a little bit. It's like, okay, there's a dragon in my room. But it doesn't go beyond that. Like, what is the why for that to happen?

Yes, exactly. And so all the puzzles that we have, you know, sometimes it's digital. Yes, sometimes it's straight up, you know, AR, but a lot of times it's paper that's being, or beautiful cardboard pieces that are beautifully printed that four people are working on from different directions to set up the answer. And then the app then is used to check your work because it knows the new image that's been created is correct or not. And then gives you a beautiful, beautifully designed cutscene that, you know, you know,

you think you were watching a television show because it's about 50 minutes of live action and and animated sequences that we've done for this. The atrophy that you mentioned about holding up a phone for too long is there. That is the truth. That happens. And like you said, we designed that a way, I believe, because we've mixed it up. You never know what combination you're going to get, but it's a meaningful puzzle that leads to meaningful story, that leads to meaningful AR.

and then it's a rinse and repeat at any combination you can think of. And I think that we've been very creative with how we're using AR in different ways without it feeling like, oh, you guys keep going to this well of this AR. I'm either getting tired of it or my arms are hurting because that's not what we're trying to deliver here. We're trying to deliver accented moments that make the experience better with augmented reality. And there are certain elements of the game that could never have been accomplished before now. When Alex and I first saw AR, we thought, well, we think that there is a storytelling platform that's available here, but we would never release something if it

feels gimmicky or if it feels like we kept going to the same. Because that's not something we want to design. We want to design something that's new every single time that we do, our new designs. Yeah, no, I mean, that comes across in your story and your background. And so it's, it's, it's, I'm asking this in the, I've, I know that you've wrestled with these things to deliver them in. And I've, I've, I've had this experience with various other projects and technologies. And I actually had the same conversation with Jordan, right? He's, he's been on the forefront of this for forever, you know, what is the new technology? How does it interact? How do we, how does it serve gameplay?

How does it serve the experience? How does it serve the story? And it's, it's a, it's a constant struggle. It's a finding what is this medium offer, right? When you can play games on your phone versus what you're getting out of a tabletop experience versus virtual reality versus augmented reality. And I think we're headed towards this world where augmented reality will eventually become the norm, right? When we don't have to hold up a phone, but it's glasses or I, you know, whatever brain chip implants, I don't know. But, you know, this ability to have a truly connected where I'm still in the world, I'm still with the people that are around me. but I can have these magical moments and experiences come together.

And I think that some of the things that you're doing and have done that cross over and add the tactile special weirdness, right, the pulling the phone out of the cake, right? Those kinds of things are so cool. And it sounds like, again, I want to get my hands on this product. It sounds like you've tried to pack a lot of that magic into this box as well as into the app and the design of everything that you're doing. you know, after the design was done and we got the printed materials and we got the technology down and it took a long time to do it, we realized not only do we pack a lot, we pack too much. Like it could have been much, much, much less and still been an amazing, amazing experience.

For sure. Can I speak just for a minute on the differences between like VR and AR, right? Yeah. So, you know, there is a big difference, right, between AR and VR. VR is wonderful. I can play miniature golf in an environment that certainly isn't my environment. I love the quest for sure. But AR is something that we like more because I like being able to see my cat in my environment, but I brought Gotham City into my home. I like being able to see my nephew playing with me. While I'm doing these impossible things, there's something very personal about having my own things in the view of the game play. play area that I'm in. It's so important.

And what I love about using the phone is that, well, you've got two billion people that already have that AR technology, you know, in their pockets. It's so much for us, that was the bet over the VR. AR just seemed more personal to me. I don't know how you feel about that, Justin. Yeah, no, that's, I kind of, I feel like I kind of tip my hand as I described it. Because, yeah, I mean, I've made virtual reality games. We did a virtual reality version of.

Ascension. I worked in another game called Labyrinth. And, and, you know, the more, it is the, the first five minutes of your, of VR is like incredible. It's like this magical transformation. You're like, wow, this is so cool. And then I found my, you know, while it's still cool, my, my, my, my joy of it dropped dramatically over time because I'm functionally cut off from the world. And the experiences are cool, but not so much cooler than things I can do with people and with things seeing my environment, seeing people around me. So, of course, it's why I focus on tabletop games a lot because I still think there's just a magic to being around the table and being with people.

But of course, there's incredible advantages that technology brings. And so the best version of AR, I think, is without, to me, without question where the future is going, right? I mean, I don't know if the, you know, I'm sure you've seen the new Apple goggles that they announced, I think a couple months ago and they're supposed to be coming out soon where it has a, another level of AR. I don't know if that's the next frontier or not, but I think

as it becomes more integrated, as you mentioned, the fact that everybody has a phone in their pocket pretty much means you can now take that for granted when you're doing designs and say, okay, well, based on that, what can we do and what's possible now that wasn't possible before? When people all have whatever, the better version of these

Apple goggles are, whatever it is, and it's just default whenever I'm looking somewhere, hey, we could be sitting at a coffee shop, hey, you want to play a game of chess, and the game of chess just appears on the table that we can play or like the you know like we all saw in the star wars movie where there are little creatures that move around and you know that i think that experience is something everybody wants to a to a degree uh i just don't you know it as we move through each phase you have to deal with whatever that new technology opportunity and new barrier is so when you have a phone as i mentioned

there's the i have to hold it up and look around through it but it's you know gives me these access to things i didn't have before if i had these goggles what do they do and how do they interact with the world i think every new tech technology brings with it these new design constraints, new design opportunities. And to me, the best version of AR is the best version of all of it. And I'm excited about it. Yeah, that's great. And of course, I'm familiar with the new goggles.

And I am excited about what the vision pro is going to do. It comes down, as you just said, to penetration, right? I mean, how many people will have it next year? Who knows? But I am super, super excited about the new thing. always you know I think that since well 1996 when I moved out here my life changed it's always been about just what you said it's like what's new technology how do you leverage it how do you make it meaningful and how do you just not make something that's gimmicky that's the that's

really what it comes down to how do you make something meaningful for people and empower people for sure yeah exactly and it's just it's just a fun part of the design challenge and so I'm curious then This is the animal repair shops, the broader company with infinite rabbit holes being the game. Is this the first game that you guys, that you did together on this brought under this brand? Okay. So under the brand, it is the very first game. And what we have now is a platform. And we have plans to do two more chapters in the Gotham universe.

But we're talking about it with many companies about doing other products with the platform. Because right now, when you see it, you'll see immediately, you know, wait a minute, this is scalable. You know, this, this can, this can build. And so the answer is yes, but we've done so many games in the past, digital, you know, physical, you know, live action, that is. But yes, this is our first product under Animal Repair Shop, uh, Animal Repair Shop's Infinite Rabbit Holes. Okay.

And then what, and so what made you decide this was the, this was the genre that you wanted to be in, right? You could do anything you want. You've created this company. You're working through things like it's, you know, you've worked at huge scales. you've worked in a variety of things. This is a kind of a, you know, big brand and new tech, but small scale, right, sitting around the table with your friends playing, is that what made you decide this was, this was the next chapter for you? It could have been anything, right?

You know, and you recognize that as a game designer, but we had 11 million rabid fans at the end of the WISO series campaign. You know, it's been a little bit of time. But when that happened, what they asked was, hey, guys, what's next? We'll do anything. We'll play anything. Right? And then when we went to Warner Bros, we said, hey, we have this fan base who wants more content. Let's do something.

And they said, well, look, we're on to the next movie. We did really great. It was the first billion dollar superhero movie ever. High five. Great job. We'll see you around the corner on something else. We realized that there was an untapped opportunity there. We already had a good relationship with DC because they already trusted us to make

DC canon stories, which is not an easy. feet, Justin. Yes. You know? Yes. And so all of a sudden we have these relationships and this core group of designers that love Gotham cities so much that know it like not a lot of other people do that love technology. It just seemed like the right thing for us to do for sure.

Wonderful. Yeah. Well, I am headed back. I'm still international right now, but I'm headed back stateside shortly. And I'm going to pick up a copy of this game so I can try it because it sounds amazing. and if I'm in LA, I'd love to come by and see this 49 boxes thing that you've built. It's really, you've done such a great job. I guess, you know, where did you develop your storytelling abilities?

Because it's every story you've told. I didn't care where you were. You got me hooked. You got me excited. I was like, I wanted to know what was next. I wanted more. Where did that come from? What did you develop this?

Okay. You're very kind, Justin. I really appreciate that. I've been fortunate, you know, since I moved out here to be surrounded by Imagineers and ex-Imagineers. Like the first Imagineer I ever met really was a legend named Eddie Sato. He's a great storyteller, great creator. If anybody there does research, you'll know. And then working with Susan Bonds, the president of Animal Repair Shop and Infinite Rabbit Holes.

Like, she's an ex-V-P-of-Imageneering who was responsible for the Indiana Jones ride and so much other stuff, like a literal rocket scientist who understood the power. I mean, coming from Disney, coming from engineering, it's all about story. Working with Alex Liu for so long, working with Johnny Rodriguez and David Koppnow. These are legends of storytelling, and then eventually some things are going to rub off on me, and I got lucky. And then one other thing, too, is being a magician at the castle, the Magic Castle in Los Angeles. Magic, to me, the best magic is all about storytelling.

And so the more magic, good magic that I'm around, the premise becomes more important than the story. And I realize that. And so I just sort of have patterns that I've appropriated unconsciously, I think. That's how it manifested, Justin. Thank you so much. Yeah. No, and I want to, if it's possible to dig out a few lessons or things you can make conscious review, because I know a lot of game designers, you know, and a lot of people that are in this city who are, who love the

craft, they love creating experiences, but they have a hard time communicating their ideas in a way that's compelling. They have a hard time bringing their concepts to life in a way that lets them sell, that lets them really bring in audiences, that lets them improve even the game and tell the stories they want to tell. Is there anything that you comes to mind that of these things that you've picked up or ways that people could potentially improve in their own ability to make more immersive versions of their story and bring people in? Here's one thing I think that's some secret sauce, right, that I'll teach actually in my class. And it's that the more that you can tell a story around actual fact, you can lie all you want.

But as long as it's based on something in history that is amazing, that is researchable, so that the player doesn't know whether it's fiction or whether it's reality where that line is, I think the more special something can be. And if that thing that you've researched is so impressive to you to the point where you're willing to devote your life, for that year to tell the story in whatever way that you do, it's going to come through in the story that you tell. That's exactly what it is. If you have the passion for this thing that's based on truth, you can do whatever you want with that. And of course, it's going to, if you like the story and you like the experience, you're going to know that a million other people are going to like it as well.

Yeah, well, that I cannot emphasize enough the importance of having your own passion around whatever it is that you're creating, right? That your enthusiasm will will shine through. If you're trying to sell something you don't believe in, it's going to come across. If you're really excited about it, that's going to come across.

When you talk about there's sort of being this kernel of amazing truth in an otherwise made-up story, can you give some kind of an example to make that a little bit more concrete? Is there something that comes to mind or that you use when you teach this to help people see the magic behind the curtain?

Yes. Let me tell you a story. Perfect. I'm going to tell you a story about a place that exists in Riverside, California, called the Mission Inn. It is a beautiful hotel, and it's Spanish themed at its core. And the guy Frank Miller that built it, he made his money selling oranges from his orange groves that he had out there. And then when he made some money at the hotel, he decided to travel the world. And when he did, he went all over the world and became obsessed with Asian culture.

And he became obsessed with German culture. And he became obsessed with old like King Arthur's world culture, like everything from England. And then he brought all that culture year after year after year to his place. So that now wing after wing after wing has been designed on top of the Spanish-themed architecture where you have a Glock and Schpiel in a whole German area. And you've got this weird area that's all big. based around this area of the Buddha statue that he has. And this place, if you're in California, make a trip to go see that place.

Well, what I'm really getting at is that every year, for I think seven years, this group of people got together for that thing that was called Beyond Brookledge. And the entire place was taken over, right? And so after that first year that I was introduced to this place, they said, well, do you know what the story is going to be? Do you know what the theme is going to be? And I said, the theme is going to be this place. I'm going to tell a story about this place.

And this is the story that I told. That was the immersive experience that people had with the 4-9 boxes. Long ago, in the 1940s, there was a woman named Maria Amato, and she worked at the mission in as a housemaid. And she loved her job more than everything in the entire world. Actually, there was one thing that she lived more. There was a man. His name was Hector Ramirez.

He was a bellhop there that she would look at. And she realized, I love this man. He's the kindest man I've ever seen. But the problem was at this place, Frank Miller did not want relationships between the employees that were romantic because it would take away from the guest experience. And so Maria would go through her life, you know, bumping shoulders with him every now and then in talking to him and whatever. But she couldn't stand, you know, not letting him know in some way what she felt. So every day she would write a letter to him or a poem or a story that she would tuck in a box and leave outside his door. They lived on the site there in the cloister.

and every day she would look from the cloister and she'd watch him open the box and he'd read it and he'd look around for whoever sent it but he'd never see her and she would hide in the shadows until the next day that she would do this and this went on for months until finally one day she just said to herself I'm going to tell this man that I love him even if I lose my job and I love this job so much and then the day that she was going to tell him she realized that he was actually drafted to war I mean it was the 1940s he had to go to germany to fight and so she went back to her life that she knew. By day, she would work as a housemaid.

And by day, or by night, rather, she would write letters that she would tuck in boxes awaiting Hector's return. And over the years, the one box becomes two, two becomes four, four becomes the 49 boxes. Until finally, 50 years later, the boxes have never been opened. They just sit in a crate with Maria Amato,

stenciled on it. And one day, I was walking through the cataccompliant, combs with the runner of the museum at the mission at the mission in and we stumble upon this thing and we opened it up we realize this is too much content for us to deal with ourselves and so as it so happens we discover this just as the event was happening which is the premise of why people are unlocking these boxes in the first place to unlock the locked box that has 19 locks on it from around the world now players begin understanding the life of of Maria and

over the course of the 50 years that she took waiting for Hector's return that never happened, you learn the truth, which is, this is researchable. This place is very famous, dignitaries, presidents, and just regular folks alike, would be at this place because this was the pilgrimage that people would take and leave objects behind for Maria. And so you might see a scale that was used by Mr. Hoover, who did the Hoover Dam. and that he would use in his mineral ologist job that he had, that he would leave behind. Or Spencer Tracy's silver Fabergerge egg that had a decanter of wine inside

that would be used for various puzzle unlocks because you would pour it over papers and text would appear in things like this. And so you would have 50 of these interesting objects that all work together in that Rube Goldberg-in way that I mentioned. Now, so at the end of the hour and a half, everyone is completed with their puzzles, they're in our activities. And by now, they've learned about Maria and all the people that she's met

and how we're all sort of the same. You know, we all have this story of unrequited love, and there's these parallels that are in our lives that match her life. Now, the last person that unlocks the last lock on that lockbox gets to open up three letters that are inside. One letter is from, it's a Western Union envelope that's never been opened,

and it's very old, it's from the 40s. And when the person unlocks it, opens it up and over the microphone they read, we regret to inform you that Hector Ramirez was shot in battle in Germany. And for his last request, he wanted Maria to be given this letter written by him. And it's a tear-stained letter from Hector himself. It says, Maria, just so you know, I mean, I always knew it was you who was leaving those notes for me. I couldn't tell you that I loved you, too, because I knew that I was going to go to war. My plan was to finish my fight here and come back and and marry you and love you forever, just so you know that it was your letters that kept me

alive this entire time. And then there was a note from Maria that says, there were so many of us during that time that got letters just like that. And I refused to open it because by my opening it, I would admit that Hector had been killed in battle. And because of that, he remained alive. And as a matter of fact, all that you just did to unlock everything that you unlocked, this whole story keeps our love alive forever. And I thank you. Please find the special song that I've written for Hector, for the return that never was. And just then, my wife begins playing the song with a violinist in the rafters.

And it's a song about secret love, which is what their whole story was about, this secret love at the Mission Inn. And I have to say that there isn't a dry eye in the house. Sort of the important thing here is a long story, was that we, Really, it's based on reality. It's sort of based on all of our realities of unrequited love, but it's also based on the reality that the mission in did indeed exist. And the people are sitting in the very place that the story is about.

That's so beautiful, undeniably amazing. And then the connections that are made in this place become stronger bonds, right? Even married couples that are together, I would imagine, are appreciating each other more. And I think that's the most important thing with any game that brings people together It makes people feel smart, sure, but maybe liking life even more. Incredible. Incredible. Thank you so much for sharing that, Michael.

That was awesome. All right. So I know we've run short on time here. You've been very generous with your time. And just such, I could hear you tell stories for another hour and a half. But for people, we've talked already about Infinite Rabbit Holes and the awesome new game panic in Gotham City. Are there other places people can go to hear from you, learn from you? You mentioned you teach.

Where should they go if they want to hear more great stories from you or play more of your games? Well, if you, man, if you want to take a class, I'm teaching classes at Pasadena Art Center right now for immersive storytelling and game design. But really, if you look, if you want, reach out to me. How about that? at Michael at 49boxes.com or Michael at Animal Repair Shop. And that'll be the best way, I think, right from the horse's mouth. The plan is to be doing a little bit more speaking at conventions. And next year, we're going to be at recon 24.

And we're going to bring the 49 boxes there. And I'll see you at the Magic Castle as well for some performances. How about that? Oh, now that's, I will definitely take you up on that one. That's amazing. All right, incredible. I can't wait for, you know, we have. not gotten to me before this. I am very excited to get to meet in person and follow up because

yeah, I feel like we are caught from the same cloth. You have done so many incredible things. I can't wait to see what's next. So thanks so much for your time. Justin, this was an honor. Thank you very much. Have a good day. 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 platforms such as iTunes, Stitcher, or whatever device you're listening on. Listen to 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 find books or something.