Think Like A Game Designer - Phil Walker-Harding — Crafting Accessible Games, The Journey from Self-Publishing to Global Success with Sushi Go!, and Mastering the Art of Core Game Mechanics. (#31)

Episode Date: June 30, 2022

Phil has a great origin story because it is one that represents what it’s like for most designers to make it in the industry. His most popular game, Sushi Go!, has sold over a million copies and has been translated into 20 languages. Phil specializes in games that are easy to learn, and that can be played by people of all ages. In the Think Like A Game Designer course, I often use Phil’s games like Gizmos and Sushi Go!, as examples of elegant distillations of core principles. There are some amazing lessons in this episode—Enjoy! 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 speak with Phil Walker Harding. Phil is a really great example of a game design success story. He really put in the work and did the grind to be able to publish his own games, bring them to conventions, find more professional publishers, eventually build those relationships, get his games to market,

and really reach a level of success that most people aspire to be able to get to. And he does it through not just the hard work and the iteration loops, which you've heard over and over again from guests of this podcast, and I probably beat it to death myself enough, but also to really drive down the idea of elegance or what he calls accessibility. Right? One of the things he talks about is accessibility at all costs.

And you can see the value of that elegance and design coming through in some of his more popular games like sushi go and gizmos, which are really cool examples of distilling really fundamental principles like drafting and engine building as these core mechanics. and thinking, okay, how do I make this as accessible as possible? How do I strip away all the stuff that gets in the way? And we dig into all of this in this episode. There's tons of great lessons for you,

whether you're thinking about publishing your own game, whether you just want to get started as a designer, whether you just want to really deconstruct some of these great, very popular games that are really just masterclasses in what to do to make great games and how to build designs that can be accessible to a large audience, but still have that depth of play that a core group can continue to play it

over and over and over again. So without further ado, I will let Phil speak for himself and present to you, Phil Walker Harding. Hello and welcome. I am here with Philip Walker Harding. Philip, it's wonderful to get to speak with you. Thanks for having me on.

Really nice to be here. Yeah. So, you know, this was actually great because I regularly use your games as examples of really just great elegant distillations of core mechanical principles. And I find that it's always a much more challenges. Tons of people can take a mechanic like drafting with Shushi-Go or the kind of engine building from Gizmos and build something that's very complex and has a lot of extra bells and whistles

to shine off, but very few people who can really distill it down to something that feels good and naturally has a good theme, mechanic connection that just kind of flows. And so I'm a big fan. I can't wait to dive into those projects specifically. Oh, thank you. But the way I usually like to start, because for a lot of people who are fans of your games

and love the idea of playing, you know, can seem kind of, you know, daunting and mysterious to kind of how you get started and how you get into things. And so I'd love to just kind of start with your origin story. Tell us a little bit about yourself

and kind of how you got into game designing and we'll I'll pepper you with the questions along the way to pull out some universal principles as I can. Sure thing. Well, so grew up in Australia where I still live. We had a lot of the mass market American games here. So when I was young, I played most of the same board games American kids would have played. But a few games that really struck me growing up were a couple of Ravensburger games in the 80s made it over here. So Scotland Yard, the Amazing Labyrinth.

And even when I was really young, both of those, I was like, this is different. And I knew that I knew they were from somewhere else because Scotland Yard, the printing we had had a, the spill to spill the Ciaris logo on it, but it said Europe's award winning game or something like that. And I was like, what is this magical place where they award board games? So I think I had this sense that there was something different about them. But then, like a lot of people, much more got into video games sort of as an adolescent and into teenagerdom and sort of forgot about board games in a way. But then sort of in university discovered settlers a guitar and Carcasson, all the great German games that were coming over. and that feeling came back of like,

oh, there's something different about these games and instantly just dove in. And sort of instantly dove into game design as well because as a kid, I'd always fiddled around with, well, if I did anything as a kid, I tried to make my own version of it, you know, I was one of those kids. And so I'd always played around with making my own board games

as a very young child and getting older. Yeah, when I got back into games, it was just a natural thing. And it became this little hobby straight away that I was tinkering with my own designs as well. So when you're you're tinkering with your own design. So a lot of us have that experience as a kid. We're playing and we make our own games. We make our own rules. What your process, when you're coming back to this, you're doing your own paper prototypes.

You're taking games you like and modifying them. What is, you know, what kind of, what do you remember from those periods about your process that kind of starts you down this path of making things? more professionally. Well, one of the first things I played when I got back into modern games was Lost Cities by Ryana Kniezia. And totally loved it. Loved everything about it. It was so amazed how much gameplay came out of so few things.

But I was like, why is this only for two players? I want to play this with more. So one of the first things I did was try and make a three to four player kind of lost cities. And just with paper and markers and. I thought, you know, it would be relatively easy to figure out, but I realized straight away how important it is in that game design that it is a two-player game, you know, that that is the DNA of the game. So that was like, oh, wow, there's, there's, you know, a lot going on, even in this very simple design. So then, yeah, I just started kind of coming up with my own

little ideas, just very simple prototypes experimenting. I think like when every designer starts, you've got to get out of your system a few things. Like there's just things we default to for some reason, probably because of our childhood experiences. But, you know, take that cards and roll and move and all these things that are in your head from your childhood. You know, at some point,

I'm sure I tried a whole lot of bad ideas that weren't working and put my friends through a few really bad playtests. But slowly I just figured out, I guess, my own style and what people were responding to. But it was kind of just at the start, just throwing everything at the wall. Yeah. So a couple things to highlight, right? One, I think it's just a phenomenal way to get started, right?

Just take a game you love and try to change something about it, right? Take something that you want to see different, something you want to see, and go through that experiment. And often you end up realizing, oh, well, this doesn't work for this reason or that reason, but it's a great way to get started or even to create real things. I mean, I created dissension by saying, oh, I really like Dominion. But, man, I wish these cards would change all the time. So I started just shuffling up a dominion deck and dealing out cards and was like, well, this doesn't work for a variety of reasons. But I bet you I could make it work.

And then, you know, the underscoring, the principle that every designer on here is talked about, which is just, hey, you have to make a lot of bad ideas and try them before you can actually get to any good ideas. So those are pretty universal and important principles and ways to get people started. But I loved, you said, I had to find out what my style was, right? finding what your voice was as a designer. Could you articulate what that is? Is that something that's conscious? Or how would you describe yourself as a designer? Yeah, well, I don't think at the beginning,

I really had a sense of this for quite a while. And it's only something, I think, when game design became kind of work that I kind of paused to really consider in terms of an identity or a way I was, different. But I think I've kind of come to think of myself as like my style is accessibility at all costs or something like that. Or you talk about distillation of ideas. And there's something about for me that I love, which is finding the core heartbeat of a

mechanism or a moment of play and just presenting that to the players. as unadornedly as I can, so that it's very easy to grab a hold of an experience. That's sort of probably how I think of it. So one, my audience is almost everyone. The lowest barrier to entry to start playing as possible is something I'm really conscious of in my designs. And then also I feel like, yeah, this thing that's hard to explain, elegance distillation of just taking one really great idea.

and just saying here it is without much else. Yeah, no, I love that. Yeah, elegance is the word that I use when I teach this principle, and it's getting more play and experience from less things is the way I try to describe, right, whether that be rules or components or whatever, how much getting the most kind of value and joy or whatever emotion and experience you're looking for out of fewer and fewer things that you have to put in. And I think that, yeah, that is definitely something that has come through in my experience of your designs.

And it's very hard to do well. It's actually one of the things. The key skills as a designer matures that the tendency up front is always to want to add things. You know, people come pitch me. It's like, all right, well, I want to make like World of Warcraft, but like also with like Halo and has other thing. I was like, but it's like a board game. I'm like, okay, let's pick one one thing to start with. It's funny, isn't it?

Because in a lot of other areas, you start with simple things, almost naturally. But I find that too. And it was true with me as well that the impulse at the beginning is to make your magnum opus, you know, is to make the game with everything you've ever wanted in the game. It's strange, but it seems to be a natural step a lot of us go through. It's just I've got to get everything out there in the first game, do something epic. But that's actually a hard way to start. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah, no, it's, I think, I think it's just, it's true in a lot of fields, right? You know, you want to start making movies. You can't make, you know, Terminator on your first go. You've got to, you know, maybe try a short film, you know, maybe try writing a script first, you know, like, and I think it's a, it's very, I think games have this illusion of, like, accessibility that, like, you know, making a film you recognize is, like so much going on.

It's like, oh, I got to get all this stuff in this budget. They can't possibly do that. But a board game, it seems like, oh, it's just, you know, pieces of paper and writing on them and card, you know, tokens. Of course I could do that. And recognizing how much goes into the systems designed behind it and how every one little piece interacts with everything else. And how to manage all of that is something that that just comes from bashing your head against the wall a few times, I think. Yep. Yep.

Okay. So you toyed things around. We'll get back to the narrative here. You were toying around with ideas. You started to find your voice a little bit. And then what, where does this transition into? now this is a real career path or what's the first kind of strike that you made at that? Well, about six months probably into just, you know, thinking about game design as a little bit of a hobby on the side, purely for fun.

I started to really think, oh, I should, I'd love to get these games out into the world. and my initial response, so this was 2005, six, seven. So it's like way before Kickstarter, way before production facilities had amazing websites, anyone could get quotes on. You know, it was like way before some of these things felt achievable for one person to just go make a game. So I thought, okay, I could start something really small, self-produce and self-publish, just small print runs and just sort of see what happens. So I tried to figure out how I could make

games myself. So I started making kind of 50 or 100 copy print runs of my own stuff and taking them to just little local conventions and selling them online. And man, that was a great learning process. Oh my God, I can only imagine. So yeah, I want to dig into this a little bit more because that's that's as you mentioned like nowadays that's way easier to do than it ever was before and it's still very challenging and intimidating right you can go to you know we had the the CEO of the game crafter on the podcast a little while ago and you know that it's like you know point and click you can build build a game and have it shipped to you for relatively relatively reasonable cost for low runs but it's still very difficult and challenging how did you get to that point how did you you you called

a manufacturer. You just like, how to walk me through a little bit of the story of you going from, yeah, I'm going to totally do this to you actually have games to sell. Yeah, well, I mean, looking back on it, it was a bit of a kind of wild and crazy thing to try, but I think I knew, so in Australia, I'm also in Australia, so not near any of the major

board game producing centers. And I think I knew, I didn't have any money at all to invest in this. So I think I just knew it was going to be a very hand-made. process. So my first game, Archaeology, I literally, you know, got a business card printer to print out cards. I made

the boxes myself. You know, we're talking that level of homemade stuff. And when you're only doing 50 copies, you kind of go, oh, well, this is, you know, painstaking, but it's only 50 copies, so I can do it. And that's how I started. And so, yeah, the first game I did

was the first version of Archaeology. I made, had a board and tokens and all these things. And it almost killed me, you know, actually making the game because there was just a lot of work. But, you know, I sold them all and I got, you know, mixed feedback, but I got some good and bad feedback, some encouraging feedback. And so I thought, I've got to keep going. But the very next thing I did was go, okay, what's the absolute simplest physical form? So I don't spend, you know, 10 hours. as making each copy. So then I just distilled that original design into archaeology, the card game, which was just cards. So all I was doing then was just getting business cards printed and then

putting them in a box. So yeah, a bit of a bit of a crazy thing, which seems so weird now, because yeah, if the gamecraft only existed, but yeah, but yeah, that's just, that's just the path I figured out for me. And it kind of got, the good thing about it was it really quickly got me out there. So even a couple of my very earliest ideas were getting played by strangers around the world and they were writing little reviews and stuff. And that was a really quick learning curve. Yeah.

Yeah, that's great. I mean, like the very least, like the process, I really, I'm grateful for, you know, I mean, now I run a game company, but even from going, from a designer and I shifted to being a product manager for a while when I was doing the World Warcraft Miniatures game and it was just like really, really forced me to care about components and pricing and figuring out how you build things and, you know, just much, every, everything that now is really helpful as a designer to think through. If you're going to, you know, pitch a game, it was just a box with cards in it. That's one scale of game and what you're able to do. And if it's got to

have, you know, pre-painted plastic miniatures is a whole different scale you've got to be dealing with. And so you got to learn that lesson with actually blood, sweat and tears of actually cutting and putting everything together yourself. That's really cool. Yeah, yeah. Literally, if I do it this way, it'll take, you know, 10 more hours. Okay, I won't do it that way. Yeah, yeah. And again, I love these stories because it's just like there's so many people out there

for whom this is a pipe dream, right? This is like, oh, I could never do this. And you had no money. You were trapped on an island. you had to make everything yourself and you were able to do it. And again, even that game was not quote unquote successful, but it was a great, you had enough of the feedback and you were able to learn from that and then grow from there. So it's just, it's just a wonderful story.

So, okay, so you're making things yourself. You've learned to streamline. You're continuing to build that. This is like 2007-ish. What happens next? So I took, I think 100 copies of Archaeology the card game to a convention, which was at the time sort of the biggest convention we had and here, and it was still quite small. And for some, you know, wild reason, Zev from Zeman Games, decided to fly all the way over and have a booth. I think he was pretty much the only international kind of booth there.

And I loved, you know, some of what he'd already been doing. And so I was like a bit starstruck. But he was going to the phase where he was picking up lots of cool little card games from Japan and other places. And so I played the game with him at this convention and he signed it. And that was pretty amazing feeling. Like that was like a really big moment because it felt like, wow, all the work in this first year has kind of led to actually, you know, a publisher, you know, discovering my game. So that meeting was very kind of serendipitous that he was there and that we were able to meet.

And yeah, because at the time, I mean, I think I'd emailed a few publishers to try and say, hey, do you want to have a look at my game? And they were just like, well, we really do in-person meetings. You know, that's just how we work. So when you're around, we'll see you. And really until COVID happened, I found that was a lot of publishers just wanted to see pictures at conventions. That was really how they operated. So it's hard when you don't live near the big conventions. So that was a great moment.

So yeah, Z-Man signed that. Yeah, that's amazing. I think it's, again, just to sort of tease out some principles here, right? Again, going to conventions, certainly pre-pendemic, but frankly, still post-pandemic, I think, is the best way for new designers to be able to get their stuff discovered, right? Being able to actually, because most publishers are at these, especially at the big shows, you know, Jen Con, Spils, and others that they will be there. And it's actually really, most of the time, they're very nice.

And they will find a way to make time for you at a show if you're also nice and, you know, have a good pitch together that you can get your point across. And so it's still, I find the best way to go. But yes, right now there's a lot more opportunities to do remote pitches. It's actually one of the things we teach people in our course. We do a virtual pitch day, calling a bunch of publishers at the end of people that go through the Think of the Games on our course. And they're able to pitch to a variety of different publishers. And it's actually very efficient, but still not as easy to gather and get people to pay attention to you when you're not in front of their face.

Yeah, it's really, really different. of pitching, but has helped me out a lot in the last couple of years to be able to do that. Sure, sure. Do you have maybe any interesting kind of tips or advice for people, whether it comes to preparing and pitching in real life or trying to do one of these remote pitches or get a publisher to pay attention to them remotely? Yeah. Well, it's been really interesting with the pandemic that a lot of, a few quite big publishers have had kind of quite open. and invites to like pitching days. And I think because they can just sort of set up conferencing and just go through people

really quickly and efficiently, they're quite happy almost for whoever wants to pitch them to pitch them remotely. I think, so I've done it maybe half a dozen times, I would say, during the last couple years pitching, you know, a whole bunch of games all at once over Zoom. And I think something I learned pretty quick is to make a couple of times. PowerPoint as opposed to like tilt my laptop camera down so they can see the prototype. So I would take, you know, take photos of everything, make like a little mini PowerPoint presentation of the game's key points and then share my screen and present that, which sounds a bit formal,

but I just think the alternative to just kind of, you know, trying to give them an impression of what's on your desk and then having your face kind of kneeling down behind it just didn't work the first couple times I did it. So I found that that really helped. And it's really different from pitching in person for that reason because it's like, I'm not actually physically there. Your eyes can't move around what I'm showing you. So I kind of moved to saying, okay, here's slide one, and here's what I want you to know, and here's some photos and here's a little video. And that seems to have really been the way I've gone and seems the best route for me to just get the information across. Yep.

Yep. I found things like that. You know, I always advise people like have a have a sell sheet or, you know, whatever, a couple sheets in a presentation with the key information you need. I will tell how people record like a one-minute video, like a little highlight reel of the game. And you can show, so you can show what the physical thing is. or do it in tabletop simulator is also really powerful for a lot of people. You can actually play the game at least and see it. Certain types of games work better than others for that.

But different tools that are not just, yeah, tilting your camera at a board. I think it's a great, great advice. Awesome. Okay, so you got your first game picked up. You're elated. You've been doing this for a year. Now you're a big success. You've got your game picked up.

You're wealthy. You can retire from everything else. That's how it works, right? Not really. So yeah, I didn't really have any illusions that, you know, getting one little card game picked up was going to be a huge money spinner. But it really wasn't. You know, it sold through its first, you know, print run reasonably fine. But, you know, it's not a whole lot of money getting a little royalty from a small game.

So, no, nothing really changed in that way. It was much more for me about just sort of the recognition of someone else saying, oh, your game's okay. And it's worth putting out. That was just a big confidence boost. So the next thing I did was sort of on the back of archaeology just being out. I decided to go to Essen, so the big game fair in Germany. And I thought, well, it's super expensive to just fly over for a few days to try and pitch my games in Germany. but, you know, that felt like the next way in, like the way to get in front of people. And so I just started emailing all the publishers I knew and sort of saying,

would you be interested in a meeting? I've got this one published game. I'm coming over from Australia. And I thought no one would respond pretty much. But pretty much everyone was like, sure. And I was like, what is this industry? But I was really surprised how many publishers over there were just willing to have a meeting. So I took over like four or five designs and I just worked really hard and thought,

this is the moment. I've got to, you know, buy a plane ticket and just go over and pitch. And that's kind of what I did. That was like my next kind of step trying to get into something a bit more serious. Great. Yeah. And I just, I want to reemphasize this like kind of, you know, you sort of made this point. It's like, you know, it wasn't really about the money of that first picture.

It was about that, that extra confidence, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, that, hey, you know, I've got something here and I can go forward. And I don't want to, you know, undersell how important that is, right? It may be that for people out there, they don't get a publisher to pick up their game in the first year. That's actually quite rare. But the ability to find a way to sustain your momentum to get feedback from people that you trust or from people, you know, outside the industry or people that you can get to play your games to give you that opportunity to grow and to be able to give you those little boosts

here and there to be able to get little wins along the way really helps because there's just a lot of, I don't know, sort of being in the dark forest when you're doing creative work, right? You just kind of don't know, you're struggling, the game's not coming together. It's a lot of hard work to find your way out and get to the something that's good. And so having those little bits of confidence that and finding ways to get that positive feedback when you can is really, really critical. Yeah, totally, for sure. Okay, so you're at Essen and you're, what's your plan at Essen is to just kind of you did you make appointments ahead of time were you just walking the floor did you have a booth space what was the yeah so i had a i booked appointments

ahead of time so i just is i think i had around 10 and uh booked them all in to as few days as i could um and and well first of all just completely wowed by essence so yeah i was just walking around blown away by how big it was and how vibrant everything was over there. I'm like, yeah, I want to ask about booking things. There's somebody out there is like, hey, I want to go to this. I want to go to Essen. How did you book these things? Do you just call people? Do you use their website forms? Was there some open call thing? If somebody wanted to just, hey, I've got games. I want to go to Essen. What do I do? Yeah. I literally just went to each publisher's website and found their contact email, you know, and just went for it and just asked.

I think a lot of publishers would have a slightly more formal process now where you would have a digital calendar or something that they asked you to go through. But that's literally all I did. And most of the time I was just forwarded on to the right person and got a response. And as I said, quite amazed that a relative unknown, well, an unknown person was allowed some meetings. Yeah, like you said, it's an interesting industry and that people are just willing, I think, if you're nice and you're respectful, people are just, most publishers are super willing to just make new people, which is cool. Awesome. All right. So now you're there and you're overwhelmed by the massiveness of Esson. And maybe you can share a little bit of what that feels like because I've been to the show. It's not easy to describe people that haven't been there, how the scale of this thing.

Yeah, so the convention we had here in Australia would be, you know, in a small kind of, it wasn't even in a big city and was in a small convention center, you know, maybe like 50 booths around this, this hall. And then get to Essen, and the first hole you walk into must be, you know, 20 times that size. And then there's like eight halls. You know, it's just, it's as bigger event, as bigger trade fair as you'll find that, well, that I've been to. It's just massive. And what really struck me was not only the size, but that the people attending were just like, it wasn't just a subcultural kind of gamer group or geeky group. It was just like German people, you know, with their kids or.

just other people from around Europe who'd just taken the train in. It was just like, yeah, it didn't feel like a subculture. It felt just like, oh, this is just people who've come because they love games. And that was, for me, that was almost the best thing about it. It was like, okay, this is niche to me, but actually here, it's much more mainstream. And I think there was just something really nice and encouraging about being a part of that. Yeah, it's wonderful. It's very well said.

I had the exact same experience. And then you see these giant holidays. on the main days of the show where they're just packed like you have to like sardines walking through and just trying to see all these regular just regular people like you'd see on the street anywhere all just really excited to buy games and you know kind of the types of games that we love and so yeah it's really really fantastic an eye-opening experience so awesome so you're there you've got your 10 pre-scheduled meetings and how does how does that all go well i i sort of you know found my own way in terms of pitching. Like, I didn't really know what to do, but I just kind of thought, well, I'll make it

quick and snappy. I just started showing people my games, really. So I met, like, a lot of publishers that I loved, like Ravensburger and Cosmos and Repos and all these publishers, I was playing their games. And I was, you know, super nervous. And I just would go through and show them my four or five games and they generally say, okay, just show me those two. They seem to suit us. And so I would show them those one or two games. And out of all of those meetings, I think only about three publishers were interested enough to take a prototype. But I still saw that as, like for me, that was a real win. Like I was, would have been happy with one. So getting two or three was pretty great. And so I left prototypes with them and kind of just waited and just was really excited

to see what would happen next. Cool. Okay. So then you worked your way through there. You got some reasonable feedback. How did things proceed from there? Well, none of those games got picked up. But I got really good feedback. And also like started relationships. So there were people I met then that I still talk to, you know, which is pretty cool. So just being seen and known and getting to know people you click with at different publishers is really good. So that was something I think I really took away from that. But also, yeah, all of the games that got rejected were I got feedback. Like I got a letter with feedback in it. And I've just found that really useful. And, you know, it kind of obviously any rejection hurts a little bit but at the same time I think I was just trying

to have an approach of well I'm still new I'm still learning and um if the game's not good enough the game's not good enough so you know be honest and I'll try and I'll try and improve so I yeah so some disappointment but also like as I said like I think a lot of gains in terms of just experience relationships um So when I got back, I kept kind of working on those designs and also kept kind of thinking about self-publishing. So within a few years, I had a few more kind of little self-published projects happening. So I was still getting games out that way. And really, I was just looking for whatever opportunities would pop up to get different ideas, either self-published or in front of publishers when I could.

So you're both parallel processing, publishing on your own, and your building and you're pitching as you go along the way. So that's a good fair amount of stuff. And you have another job during this time? You're doing this full time. Just curious how that, how that? Yeah, I did have a job. So for most of this time, I had a job and this was just a hobby. And yeah, I mean, my productivity wasn't super high for that reason.

So, you know, we're talking one self-published game a year kind of thing and the odd kind of trip or attempt to, you know, click, connect with a publisher. So, yeah, it wasn't like a hugely productive time, but it was like a slow build. And yeah, over time, I came slightly more well-known and we'll get the odd email from a publisher. You know, you're just slowly building a presence, I guess is how I look back on it. Yeah, no, it's great. I mean, this is like in many ways, you're, you've, you've lived the classic grind, right? It's a classic process for people where you're, you know, in doing a little bit more than most, I think, when it comes to actively building your own games to sell, uh, with your own hands. But, uh, I think that that's a, it's, you know, it's over time, give, put stuff out there, get feedback, try not to take it personally, get your ego out of the way, build relationships, learn, iterate, come back to it, see what sticks, keep doing. that process and don't uh you know that's that's that's that's that's it this is that's the classic a recipe as i've been able to find talking about you know dozens and dozens and dozens of designers yeah yep um and it's funny like at this point i was really disconnected from other

designers so like i hadn't met many i didn't know how to meet them um and so yeah i was a bit of a Lone Ranger in a way, figuring a lot of this stuff out. And everything sped up once I got to become friends with other designers around the world, like, and became sort of peers a little bit more. Because then you have access to all of their experience and knowledge and wisdom. And that was a real moment of things just speeding up for me. Yeah. Yeah. Being able to surround yourself with other smart people that can challenge you. give feedback is critical. It doesn't have to be super famous designers.

Just like anybody else that's like sort of on the craft, you can kind of bounce things back and forth. It makes a huge difference. Cool. Well, I want to, because I want to make sure I have enough time to talk through these things. So when I really want to, you know, fast forward a little bit towards the,

well, sushi go in particular because this thing I'm the biggest fan of. So what, how did that game development start? where did that one come from? I'm really very curious because it's really just a fascinating and well done, well done design. Thanks. Well, so yeah, Sushi Go was probably about four or five years into this whole process. I was looking for the next little card game I would self-produce and self-publish.

And crowdfunding had happened. So I think crowdfunding had just happened. So I was kind of aware that that was on my radar. But I wanted the next little card game that I could quite cheaply make. But this one was going to be in a factory. So by now I'd kind of decided I'd get it produced properly in a factory. So I wanted this one to be really, you know, the best game I could make to just put money into and try and have a real go at self-publishing.

and since archaeology, I had made dozens of like failed little prototypes for the next kind of set collection card game that I wanted to do and nothing was clicking, nothing was working. And then Seven Wonders came out and I'd also been a fan of fairy tale. But Seven Wonders in particular came out and the kind of past drafting was just so instantly enjoyable that I was like, Oh, this is, I just love the mechanism. But the thing about Seven Wonders was, I love the game and I still do. But I found it quite a hard teach. So I've always mostly played games with other pretty casual gamers. And I found Seven Wonders was often just like the eyes glazing over moment during the teach happened.

Because there's a lot of icons and you've got to kind of preempt the different eras. And it takes well to teach. And so I was instantly thinking, I want kind of this experience, but I want it just, I just want to play a game that's really just the drafting and not much else. So I started toying around with that idea and I sort of had, as I said, five years of failed set collection mechanisms in my brain. So quite quickly, I came with ideas for the cards that were. would make like set collection rules that would really be fun in the context of past drafting.

And so quite quickly, I just threw a bunch of them into a deck and started testing it. And quite quickly, the game kind of clicked. So it only took a few months to get from that point to this is ready to produce, which was pretty quick. Well, so you went through a few different mechanisms that didn't work as far as the, you know, because I'm a huge fan of drafting games. I got hooked on it from my days playing magic and drafting that, but it's like the depth of drafting comes from these sort of differential values between players and, you know, this whole context of being able to evaluate the cards based on what, you know, what else has come before and what

you're reading from what's been coming from others. And so, you know, there's a building that complexity in a way that's simple is, is deceptively hard. And so I'm curious whether, were there, Were there specific other ideas or things that you tried that didn't pan out that you couldn't recall? I think the biggest thing was like how many different types of cards are there and how many of each card are there? And I know that sounds like super simple, but actually that was one of the biggest things to get right. Because you need to be aware of what the possibilities are, but there can't be too many. then you're just going to glaze over and think, well, whatever I get in my hand, I'll get and I'll see what happens. Like, you need to be aware of what's out there, but I'm able to kind of visualize the play space

pretty easily. So getting the number of different things was sort of the biggest thing. And then trying to make each one feel different. So Tempura doesn't give you many points, but it's not that risky. Sashimi gives you more points, but it's really risky. um, marquee rolls are about trying to beat someone, someone's number of marquee rolls at the table that round. So trying to make each type of card have a simple but different, um,

point scoring rule that evoked a slightly different emotion. So I don't know if there are many that interesting ideas that didn't make it in. There's, like I can think, I tried for a while like a, a super dumpling. So a

dumpling is a triangular scoring. 13, 15 for 1, 2, 3, 3, 4 5 dumplings. So I think I tried like a more powerful dumpling

that took longer to ramp up the points. I try like 10 or 20 different variations of the sushi rolls to get the scoring right on that. But mostly it was about just honing in. Like what's the right amount of cards

for this deck to make it just click? Yeah, it's great. So it's like, you know, just again, just kind of bounce around some principles here. So there's, you know, making enough different types of things available in the draft that you feel the variety, but it's few enough that you can sort of comprehend, you know, the scope of what's going on and plan to, you know, look for specific things and try for specific things in a draft. And then to have what it sounds like the main axes here is varying degrees of risk. reward kind of payoff structures that create different drama cycles for players depending upon where they are like, oh man, I really need to get the third copy of this or only if they, you know, I just need to make sure I have more than them. So as long as I'm far ahead, I can dissuade them and, you know, different aspects of like that people can opt into depending upon the strategy. So their emotional arc will be very different each time they play,

depending upon which, you know, which pieces they're going for. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. And and getting that to click was mostly trial and error during testing. You know, like it's a hard thing to quantify, but when it was working, it was just working. It was one of those games where it just got in the groove and you're like, okay, this is the right number of cards. Yeah, this is right. Yeah, yeah.

Well, it's one of the things I love about, like, testing simple card games that have quick play times because your iterations can be so fast, right? That's where you can make games so much, faster than a traditional cycle because like, okay, nope, just replay that. Okay, just cross that one number out on that card. Let's try it as a, you know, three for every one or whatever. And then co again. And so you can really make tons of progress very quickly, which is just wonderful.

Yeah, that's one of the things that attracts me to simple and quick games is that, um, that cycle is so quick. And so you can feel progress. Um, and I think a lot of designers can relate to when you're not feeling progress on a design, it just, just stagnates and you feel pretty terrible. So I love short games. That's one of the reasons, I think.

And so you started with the, the mechanic was the core inspiration. Like you saw Seven Wonders and you're like, okay, I want this game, but a little bit of a lot, you know, easier teach.

And the sushi, you brainstormed different ways to, you know, what you pass around a table and collect and the sushi conveyor belts came to mind relatively quickly. And that kind of fed the process as you went through it. The theme and mechanics kind of stayed.

relatively stable the whole time. Oh yeah. So one of the first ideas, I just asked myself, what's something that goes around the table. I remember thinking when I was theming it, like, what goes around a table? And I thought, well, I must have just eaten sushi, and I thought, oh, a sushi conveyor belt. And it just, that just felt like one of those really natural thematic clicks. And I just went, yep, that works. And so that never changed. And I think actually helps the game quite a bit because it's just such a simple little metaphor everybody gets. Yes. No, that's that's the other thing I want to brought it up because it's just like, it's so wonderful when you can make those things click and the theme just carries the mechanics

and, you know, and makes it just much, people can just grok it so much easier than, you know, I mean, Seven Wonders like, again, also love the game, but the, you know, the abstractness of like this this particular building leads into this particular building and has this thing and this icon here I was like, who, that's just, it's all jargoning, you know, just made up as far as I can tell. Maybe there's a story there that if you know the history, but it's like very opaque to most people. Whereas, oh yeah, of course, I want these pieces of sushi go all together. And I want a piece of wasabi on my fish, but not by itself or, you know, whatever. Like this is a lot of interesting automatic things that come with it, which is great.

So you're in a, so you were, you were deciding to do this via Kickstarter as kind of a new field. you already have experience producing things. You've chosen to produce something that's relatively simple. You have some notoriety and some audience. And you've, did you have a specific strategy around kind of marketing and pushing it out there? Like, again, you've done, you're doing everything kind of as close to buy the book as I can, I can think of. You're building slowly over the audience, building your experience with stuff, you know, creating a lower risk type product for this type of, for being able to fund and launch yourself. all great tips for people that the default is usually not to do those things.

But what about the marketing and trying to crowdfund? That's a big hurdle for a lot of people. Yeah, well, this is when crowdfunding was pretty new. So Kickstarter wasn't kind of open to Australia even. So I used Indiegogo, which was. And there wasn't anything really out there about, or not much anyway, about Kickstarter strategy and marketing. So it was all pretty new. So I just thought, well, I'll just put it up and I'll buy some ads on board game geek because I knew that that was one way you could advertise your game.

So yeah, I didn't need that much money for the print run to succeed. I think it was $5,000 was the goal. And I think it got almost 8,000. So, you know, it funded, but it wasn't a runaway hit by any means. But it was like, okay, cool, that's what I needed. But yeah, it was really. just a little bit of word of mouth and a small ad buy on board game geek that was it really um and it was just enough to get the print run made and so i got the print run made and um by this time i had a bit of a relationship with district i had like one sort of distribution relationship in the states and so i just sent them a few cases and just kind of waited to see what would happen really Okay, okay. And then it got picked up by game rate after that. They found it and published it? Or how did that? How did that come?

Yeah, so it was selling like well for me. Like the distributor was like, oh, you know, this is going pretty good, pretty well. Send more, send more. So I was like, oh, great. So I was aware it was selling okay. But we're talking, I think the print run was 3,000. And it's sold through that in maybe, you know, six months. And towards the end of that, Game Right just emailed me. And Jason from GameRoy was like, oh, is that a game night? Someone pulled out sushi go. And it's a perfect fit for us. Would you be willing to license it to us? And similar to the experience with Zeman, that was a moment of like, yes.

Like, I definitely would. And I was really glad, I mean, obviously super fortunate and blessed that it happened to fall into Jason's hands. Like, that's something you can't plan for. But super glad that he clicked with what I was trying to do. Because a lot of the time during sushi go, I was literally thinking to myself, how would game right make this, you know? Because I liked a lot of their little card games like loot and kachis. and little car games they used to put out.

And I just thought, oh, what would Game Right do to make this really accessible to kids to play as well? And so, yeah, when they clicked with the design aesthetic of it, I was, I was pretty chuffed. So I want to just like walk through the decision thought process. So it sounds like this is like no brain or snap call, yes. But, you know, I had an interesting similar decision. And when I first released Ascension, I had my first company, self-publishing opportunity. And then we start selling kind of well. And then I get called from Fantasy Fight games who wants to buy, you know, wants to license the game.

Oh, really? Yeah. I didn't know. Yeah. Well, I don't know if I ever even talked about it before, actually. So maybe nobody knows. But the, and I had that moment or I had to make this. decision. Like, do I just like license it to them and let them run with the ball and I, you know,

just kind of stay as a game designer or do I keep using this and publishing it and use it as a platform to build, build my own publishing company? And I remember being, you know, it was a very tough decision at the time. And I obviously ended up deciding to keep it and run with it. And that worked out pretty well. But it was not easy and it was a large tradeoff either way. And so I'm curious, did that, did it cross your mind to say, no, you know what? I think I got a hit here. I'm been around with it or was it just this was your this was a home run from you know no no no questions asked um i think self publishing to me was much more a means to an end of getting my games out i i think i always wanted to be a designer not really a publisher um at least back then and it was just a way

uh for me to get my games out so it wasn't a very hard decision um at all and just because because I was so, I was such a big game right fan that I thought, no, this is sort of, this is exactly what I'd sort of hoped for the game in a way. I can totally see why your decision was much more complicated because, I mean, I played the first edition of Ascension and you could just tell that there was an aesthetic and a personality behind your brand even then that you were like, no, you want to do something with your brand. So I can see why that is a much harder decision. But for me, my self-publishing wasn't really like that.

It was just like, I'm just trying to get my stuff out there. And I was quite happy when the time came that I could stop doing that and just design. Yeah. Yeah. And it's a, you know, I like to highlight this element to it because it really is a huge, huge difference. I mean, the many times the majority. of my day is not spent working on games at all now, right? It's running a company and trying to manage all these different aspects of getting things done that, you know, is if your goal is to make

games, publishing them yourself is a is a heavy lifting way to do it. It's got a lot of upsides too, right? You know, obviously you get more control of the thing. You can create whatever you want. You can do a lot of different stuff. But it's a, it's a lot to take on and a lot of challenges that come with it as opposed to licensing a game where you're going to make, you know, not as much money per unit you sell, but you also have none of the risk in overhead and you could spend most of your time on design, the process of design. So I think it's a very personality driven choice, but I just really like to highlight those moments and those decisions and really it's helpful just knowing what it is that you want, because it's very easy to fall into a trap either way and just

sort of do what you think you're supposed to do. And it's really putting the thought to like what do you want your day to day to be like what's the long-term goal where do you want to be is a really helpful way to frame things that sounds like you've had that from the beginning and we're willing to do as much hard work as it took to get there which is i think one of the real admirable traits you have that that seems to have been key to your success yeah yeah it was a lot of work and it took really from like when i very first started to when i was like essentially a game designer that was my main income. It was almost 10 years, you know, really.

Wow. So it was a slow build with like lots of peaks and troughs along the way, but sushi go getting signed by Game Right was one of those big things that enabled that. Because as that grew in popularity, it sort of became my reliable royalties that you could kind of bank on getting each quarter. And so that was a big stepping stone to be able to say, okay, I can now take two days a week or whatever it is and slowly build my design career.

But yeah, it was a slow build, all things considered. Yeah, no, it's great. And that's where, again, just another one of those messages for people that are out there, like it can take a long time and it can take, it can be a challenge, but you can make it happen with that persistence, which is exactly here, 10 years to build a, to get to the point where you can do this full time, is a serious commitment. And it's funny because when you think about it from the beginning,

it's like, hey, I'm one year in. You're one year in, you licensed a game. You're like, that's why I was joking. Oh, that's it, right? You made it. And no, it's actually a very, very long process from there, even when you have this kind of early success. So, yeah, really great, great to hear the story.

I got, I already feel like I'm running too short on time. I really want to talk about gizmas. So if it's all right, I'm going to fast forward a little bit to that one. Sure. Because I love that game. I think the engine building genre is another one that I'm, you know, not, not, not, not easy to do well. I think a lot of people don't. And there's, and I would love to hear that, the origin story for that game and the kind of process for building it.

Sure. So sort of similar in a way for Gizmos and Sushi Go. So I loved San Juan and Race for the Galaxy, still do. and really loved how they created this huge sense of building and growth and creating an engine with just a tableau of cards. That was, yeah, something I really love about both those designs that I still play them and still really love that. And from when I first played Race to the Galaxy, I was like, wow, I'd love to see like a civilization-style game.

but just using a tableau like this. Like that was just, it just felt really natural that that would be something you try and do with this kind of format. So that was a design idea. I was toying with four pages, just mostly in my notebooks, I would always be drawing down ideas for that game and trying different things and so many things just didn't work. Anyway, in about 2016 or so, I kind of thought I'm going to have another crack at that idea. And I started building this civilization tableau game. And the buildings you built had different powers. And I really quickly discovered that the ones that were super fun and the ones that I always wanted to build were the ones that gave you a sort of

of a passive power like when this happens do this you know when you do this get this as well and they just felt so inherently fun at some point i was just like okay that's the game that's all the buildings of that so i like stripped out all the other buildings more or less and it just became about those sort of triggering powers um and so it was still just a little card game and it was oh i swapped the theme to be about inventions because it felt like i was building a machine machine rather than a civilization. And it was just this little card game. There were no marbles or anything like that.

And I took it to a convention. And this is where Eric Lang was there. And he was working for Simon. And he asked if I had any games. And I played it with him. And I don't know if you've ever played a game with him. But it's quite an experience. And about five minutes in, I was like,

are you even paying attention anymore to my game? And he just seemed a bit off with the fairies. And what I know he was doing now was he was basically imagining gizmos as it is now with the marble dispenser and all the bells and whistles. So he really clicked with the game, but instantly said, I want to turn this into something with a table presence that kind of matches the quirky engine.

building feel. So that kind of had this whole other development pathway after that with him. But that's how it started. Just like a really simple approach to a tableau building game with special powers. Yeah. Yeah. So again, just kind of pulling out principles. I love that there's a, you know, we all have these games that we have in our notebooks that

we have, you know, I just have a list of a hundred of them now, give or take that a little fragments or engines or themes or things I've tried to build, but haven't quite gotten there. And it'll circle back every now and then with new experience. And often it's that little theme shift can unlock everything. The game Ringmaster, I released a couple years ago, was a game I've been trying to do forever, kind of my take on a flux as simple as possible kind of trading card game-like experience or the rules are there. but it was more, you know, slightly more, you know, permanency and triggering powers like,

like you have, but it was, couldn't do it, couldn't do it, couldn't do it. Finally, circus theme showed up and it was like everything clicked and I finished the game in like three months. And so it was just like these, you never know which marrying principles will get you there. And then you also really were able to dial in mechanically on just, okay, wait, where's the fun here? There's tons of different things I can do, all this tableau building, all this things. Oh, actually, this like little triggered mechanisms. That's where I'm having the most fun. So that's now what the game's all going to be about. And once you know kind of what I call the core tension or the sort of core excitement experience, you can, you know, the job as the designer is to just clear everything away

that's not that and build only things that help enhance that particular, you know, fun or tension or element of the game, which it comes across. I'd love to hear a little bit more about some of the that transition point and how working with Eric and and the C-MON team to transform what was a card game into a components-based game and there's a lot of really like clever things especially when you have a game where a triggers B trigger C you can create a lot of awkward loops and it can feel very bookkeeping-y right to have to do all the stuff and you guys you've built a lot into the game that that really helps to mitigate that and manage that. I'd love maybe you can talk a little bit about that because I think there's a lot of

really important in lessons in there. Yeah. So I think the first thing that really helped the overload of I've got too many powers. I don't know how to keep track of them in my head, that kind of feeling, was when I figured out that all of the cards, all of their powers can be categorized by which action they enhance and then having a player board which has those actions and then columns of cards under those actions. Again, it sounds quite simple now. But when that change happened, it was like, oh, okay, well, every time I pick a marble, I just look at that column and see what else I can do. And as soon as we

categorize the cards that way, it really helped just dial in all the little things that were happening and kind of gave us focus. So that was really important. And then getting the icons right, like, you know, it's a really hard game to get the iconography right for and getting it right. So at a glance, without, without any text, you can see what is a very very important. And it's a very important. And to you in your powers. That was really important as well. And then the switch to using marbles as the resource instead of just cards. So originally it just had a, you know, the energy card, energy was just cards that you kind of had a hand of. Switching to marbles, in one way, was just a bit of a table presence gimmick, you know, like just a fun thing to play with. And I

really like that the game has a fun, tactile element. But it also really really, really sped up the moment of taking energy. So if you think about ticket to ride, every time you take cards in ticket to ride, someone has to, you know, flip over new cards and, you know, you have to say if you want from the deck or from the table and then the new cards come out. Like, it's a slightly annoying bookkeeping thing in ticket to ride. And it's why the app can be played in half the time because you don't have to do that. So as soon as we swap to marbles, that kind of went away.

So you take an energy and the new one rolls down the ramp and it's there ready to be taken by the next person. Right, you let gravity solve the problem for you. Yeah, that's right. And you put it in your little ring to store it and you can see what everybody has at a glance. So that kind of actually sped up that kind of physical part of the game. So they're kind of three of the things I remember helping the game to really work. Because there was a point where it could have gone much more down. sort of a race for the galaxy complexity kind of level,

but Eric really wanted to dial it much more into a family game. So these things, I think, helped it get there. Yeah, no, it's great. Definitely, all that stuff comes through and just highlighting the importance of, you know, of graphic design and layout and positioning and table presence. You know, these are things that are critical to the success of a game and to its sort of grokability that I think are often underappreciated.

by a lot of designers. And Gizmos is a really great example that shows that. I mean, we had to wrestle with this a lot with our upcoming game, SoulForge Fusion, which I've worked on with Richard Garfield. We took a game that was originally designed to be just played in digital, where the cards leveled up as you played them, and then we made a physical version of it. And so then we had to manually level up the cards while you're playing it physically.

And so figuring out how do you lay out the decks and the cards, and how do you make the graphics super, super clear so you can grab things quickly and even changing the turn structure so that your opponent can play while you're grabbing your leveled up cards, like all kinds of little things about positioning and layout and graphics and structure that had to be modified to turn this sort of bookkeeping task that we knew we were taking on into something that wasn't burdensome and could, you know, be justified by the value you got out of the play. And so it was a very, very conscious. It took long, the longest time of this development process was probably trying to get all of that stuff,

right? Especially because a lot of it was happening during COVID where we had to test remotely. And you can't, you know, the physicality of it is what matters. And so it was a very interesting challenge that I think a lot of people have to deal with now when you're trying to do, you know, virtual tabletop testing of some kind versus in-person testing and getting the physicality of like, you know, when you guys picked up your marbles and started And then playing around with that, I can imagine, was pretty entertaining when you're first trying to put that together as well. Oh, yeah, yeah.

And no, I totally hear you about Tabletop Simulator, an amazing tool. I made a game on it during COVID and a tile game and only ever worked with it on Tabletop Tumulator. And this was a collaboration. And when we got to the first physical prototype, we realized it didn't work in the real world. Like the physical sliding of tiles you had to do just didn't work with that many tiles of that size. And I was just like, what? We made an app. We didn't make a board game.

Yep. Yep. Yeah, it's an important thing. That's where we use Tabletop Simulator, you know, all the time now as a tool. My team is 100% distributed now. But we make their key checkpoints along the way. We're like, nope, we have to make a physical prototype here. to validate this and we have to be able to play these things here because there's no there's no substitute

for that when you're you're trying to make something that people are going to know the feel and touch and you know kind of ergonomics of the whole thing are are really critical i yeah i remember we had that even with the original version of ascension this i had no excuses i was only making this physically but there was originally like a conveyor belt mechanic on it that you would at the end of the round you would slide all the cards to the right and the card on the right of the row would fall off to help, you know, stop the row from stalling and had all these like positive values, but the, the pain in the butt of sliding that row of cards down and getting rid of it and people would forget and then would have to go back. It was like just not worth it. And eventually somebody,

one of my playtress was like, what if we just don't do that? It was like one of those head sloughing moments like, oh, I guess we could try that. It's just like instantly better. It's like, okay, cool, cool. Yeah, yeah. I, um, recently heard, um, emerson Matsushi, saying that one of his design principles is that the players touch the components as few times as possible. And I thought that was a really interesting thing to think about

because normally you think, oh no, I want my players to experience the physical pieces of the game and stuff. But I think he was talking about exactly this sort of moment where it's like, I don't want to have to slide five cards over and put a new card down every turn, you know,

as that fiddly factor, which you actually want to avoid. Yeah. Yeah. No, I think that's, I think it's a great insight. It's like, yeah, there's, there's, there's, there's, there's, there's, there's, there's, there's a, there's a, there's a, having a card in your hand or seeing the cool things or grabbing a new piece or resource or like gizmo's a great example, like grabbing a, a marble and putting it in your in your bin is like, it's kind of fun. Watching the thing roll down, there's a there's a there's a play to it. But the, the, the, the, the way you had it before, what was a row of cards that you were moving around or refilling. That's not a fun

form of, you know, the physicality is not a positive there. So there's a real, a real distinction. You know, the rolling a fistful of dice can be a lot of fun unless it's too many dice for you to hold and processing it takes too long or, you know, there are some forms of physical interaction that are part of the joy and play itself and some that are just getting in the way and knowing the difference is really key. Yeah, yeah, definitely. Yes. Oh, this has been, this has been so much fun. We are a bit short on time here, so I think we are going to have to have to wrap it up soon. I think, I said, I started it this way. I'm going to end this way. I have so much respect for your design ethos and a lot of the really cool stuff that you have made. What, if people want to find out

more about you or maybe any other cool new projects you want to talk about, how people find cool things and learn more about the stuff you're doing? Yeah, well, I have a little website about myself, which is just Phil Walker Harding.com. And I've written up little design notes about each of my games. So if you want to kind of hear a little more about the stories of some of my games, you can check that out. I guess the biggest new thing I'm doing is I've just launched, kind of going full circle in a way, I am publishing again. So me and my wife Meredith have just decided to launch a little publisher called Joey Games. And our kind of aim is to make games for kids and adults to play together with Australian themes that aren't horribly

cringe-worthy. Are you throwing shrimp on any barbies? Yes, that will not be one of our games. Yeah, I think Australians, we have a really kind of fraught relationship to our own culture, both because of like, you know, the kind of tackiness that I guess, yes, we've presented ourselves with over the decades, but also our kind of incredibly fraught history with our indigenous people and our kind of colonial past is something that I think makes Australians,

I don't know, it's a bit complicated sometimes for us. And we, I just wanted to think about putting games out into the world that we're just like, I don't know, healthily, positively Australian. Like there's lots of beautiful, amazing things about our country and our people. and let's celebrate them a bit. So yeah, so we've just launched that. The website is joeygames.com.com. And we really want to just kind of make a really positive brand

that helps kids and adults have a good experience around the table together. So that's like this big whole new challenge for me going back into publishing and doing it at that scale. So we'll see how it goes. but sort of exciting to face a new, something new, something big. Oh, that's wonderful. And I really love that, you know, you're willing to kind of go back into this arena, which we even just talked about, like, was not necessarily the thing you wanted, right,

not to do it to handle all the self-publishing, but that it's because you're, you're passionate about this cause and being able to sort of tell the story of your country and your people in a way that's healthy and connects kids and adults using the skill sets you have. So I think that's really wonderful. I'm glad to service that. It looks like I just went to the website where we're talking. It looks like you guys are doing some crowdfunding in the not too distant future. Yeah, so we're launching with three games, which you can read about on the website.

So we'll have a crowdfunding campaign pretty soon. And you can order which ones you want. And hopefully it'll go well. And yeah, it's exciting. It's exciting. It feels like being back at the beginning in a lot of ways. but I think because, and I'm sure you can relate to this, when it's your own vision and your own company

and you have a really strong sense of what you're trying to do, it can be really exciting. So that can help you get through the hard work stuff. Yes, that's really, that's what it's all about, right? You have to have a compelling vision to pull you through the inevitable challenges that come from trying to create something that hasn't existed before that is at the heart of it. And so you've really shown,

an incredible propensity for that and work ethic and drive and commitment over the long term. And I'm excited to see this come. I've already signed up to be notified when your campaign goes live. So anybody else out there that wants to do this and sign up joeygames.com. Dot-a-u. And Phil, I would love to actually have you back once this stuff goes live and maybe talk a little bit more about it because I feel like I only really got to scratch the surface here. So hopefully you can come back and join us soon.

I'd love to. That'd be great. Awesome. Well then, until next time. Thanks a lot. 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. Listener reviews and shares make a huge difference and help us grow this community and will allow me to bring more amazing guests and insights to you. I've taken the insights from these interviews along with my 20 years of experience in the game industry and compressed it all into a book with the same title as this podcast, Think Like a Game

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