Think Like A Game Designer - Reiner Knizia — Systems for Publishing 700+ Games, Crafting Profound Gameplay from Simple Rules, Innovations in Scoring and Auction Systems, and The Joy of Tabletop Gaming (#52)

Episode Date: September 26, 2023

Join us in this episode as we chat with the legendary Reiner Knizia, the mastermind behind over 700 games. With a Ph.D. in mathematics, Reiner transitioned from banking to establish one of the most recognized and enjoyed brands in the gaming world. From his early titles like Gold Digger and Desperados, his influence spans collaborations with global licenses such as The Lord of the Rings, LEGO, and Star Wars. With over 13 million sales worldwide, standout titles include his acclaimed auction and tile-laying trilogies. It was an absolute pleasure to explore his game design philosophy! 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 Reiner Canizia. Reiner may be the most prolific board game designer in the world with over 700 published games. He is highly acclaimed.

He's won the spiel de Jaris. He's won a ton of amazing awards. He is actually the first game designer who I really fell in love with. His processes, his thoughts, his efficiency and sophistication and elegance of his designs are absolutely unparalleled. Getting to speak with people like Ryanair and getting to hear his insights and learn from him is one of the joys of doing this podcast. In this episode, we talk about his process for design. how he ideates, how he prototypes, how he playtests. The differences between working on electronic games versus tabletop games,

the types of retreats that he takes, how games are a mirror for our lives. We talk a little bit about auction mechanics and drafting and bidding. We talk about trends and how you should think about trends and innovation. We get into so many great principles. It is everything I'd hoped for. We only had an hour, so we had to make as much in that time as we could. I could have spoken to him for at least another hour or two.

So I will stop talking here with my preamble, and I will let us get into my incredible conversation with the legendary Reiner Kinizia. Hello and welcome. I am here with Reiner Kinesia. Reiner, it is such an honor to have you here. Thank you for joining me today. Well, thank you for inviting me. Yeah, so I have to say you were kind of, you know, if you could say you were my first game designer crush, my first game designer idol, before I started working in this industry, I was so impressed by your games. I felt so in love with the elegance of the mechanics

and the breadth of the work that you had done. So having you on this podcast is definitely a dream come true for me. I've seen on your website you have over 700 games that you've designed, which is a kind of astonishingly large number. And I want to dig into some of that process and some of the specifics there. But I don't actually know your origin story. So I'd love to hear a little bit about how you, We got into games originally and then maybe we'll take some principles from there that have applied as we go into your design career.

Well, the wonderful thing about our industry and different from many other industries, I worked in IT and I worked in banking, different to other industries, that we all come together with very different backgrounds, but with the love for the product. That means with the love for the games. And so I probably started out as everybody else who found their way into the industry with loving games, loving to play games. And in my specific case, I grew up in a small town in southern Germany. And at that time, the only shop in town which sold games was the barber. He didn't have too many games to select from when the pocket money was always not sufficient. So I very, very soon actually started designing my own games about themes which excited me, car racing, whatever you could imagine.

And I played it with my friends. I didn't write up the rules. So some of these are completely lost in mysteries like the old ancient games. And that's how it started. That's how I got a lot of experience. You know, it's people say about, I think Malcolm Bloodwell says you need 5,000 or 10,000. However, people put it, hours. to get to in inverted commerce mastery.

So I think I got these hours in relatively early. Yeah. So I think that's great. And I find that the, you know, I like the 10,000 hours principle, but I've always modified it in my thinking where it's not just 10,000 hours. It's really the right kinds of hours, right?

Where you're able to get feedback and iterate and learn. And so you, a lot of people don't cross that barrier, right? Where they're, you know, they'll have an idea. Lots of people have great ideas. But when it comes to actually testing it and refining it, it to turn it into something that's usable and to learn and craft your skill, a lot of people don't cross that barrier. It sounds like you did that from early on, even without professional, you weren't making money doing it, you were just kind of doing it and pushing it. What was it about

either your personality or the group you're with or how did you get into that process of kind of iterating and refining or what brought you to that mindset? I mean, it was really the love of playing many different games and the excitement of playing and not having enough resources, so I admit them myself. And one has to be honest, the very early games have never been published, some of them have been lost, and they should not be published, because they need goodwill. So if one of these games was, there was a castle on either end, it was a two-player game, and there was a river with bridges, and you marched with your knights.

If one player didn't want to play, then just stayed in his or her castle, and then the game was no fun and didn't really work. But for this, it was fine because we wanted to play, and it were individual games, and the big advantage which you usually don't have, I was always present. So we could explain things and change things. There is one of the very big challenges, and that's where you say iterative and testing and so on. The one very big challenge if you are publishing is that you need to make the game really robust

so that when people open it, the game, then the fun needs to come out. So I always say, I work in the entertainment in the way we all do, but I haven't got the easy job. I'm not saying it's a really easy job. I haven't got the easy job of standing in front of the public on the stage and can immediately interact with them and see their reactions and can steer things to the right direction. No, I put my entertainment in the boxes, and when people open the box, I'm not there.

I cannot say, no, no, no, that's not meant like this. So that means testing with lots of different groups and seeing where the game goes and making it rounded and I call it robust, so that it works for the target. Games never works for everybody, but that's fine because. because nothing can be everything to everyone. Yeah, there's so many great insights in there, right? Yeah, knowing that you're building toward your target audience, being able to test with that robust group to see what happens.

Have you, I mean, I know I've had this experience with my own games where I get to do the kind of one-way mirror testing, which is incredibly painful to watch people just, you know, not understand what seems so obvious to you, but is not the case there. When you're testing with these other groups, are you kind of standing silently in the background? Do you have a series of groups that you cycle through and they already know not to ask you questions?

Or how do you cultivate that type of testing environment to really test for robustness and what principles do you apply there? We actually or I actually have a very narrow test principle. It's always a group of one, two, three, four, or five people. And I would always play in that group. I believe I have to experience the game and the fun and play with the group. And then I can be a full part of the discussions and everything afterwards, because if you don't feel it's very difficult. So I'm not doing blind tests and I'm sending the games away.

But of course, I'm aware that I could make the game funny and interesting, just putting my personality into full extent and teasing people and making jokes and so on. That, of course, will not be when people open the box. So I will very much refrain from that and be more a bit of the passive player. It depends on which stage the game is, yes, and when testing. But I will play, but I will leave the leading role to the other players. Got it. Okay.

So you are in the game, but you're sort of taking a back seat. more just sort of observing. And my assumption here is that your instincts are really just fine-tuned to where people are getting confused. And so you're able to intuit that even without necessarily 100% removing you from that situation. You also see that I'm not writing the final rules for the game. I always write my rules for the publishers. There are exceptions. But usually my game designs will not even have a publisher when they are created.

And then I would go and find a publisher. And as I, at the start of the design process, don't even know what kind of game comes out very often, then it's very difficult to decide. Of course, sometimes we would do an expansion, we would do a second game in a series on the brand, and then I would write the rules in the style which has been published. And then it is more important to understand it.

But that's, in my eyes, more the responsibility for the publisher. They have their style and make sure that that comes over. However, that is a big point of grief for me, because I must say that in my experience, there are not many publishers who can write really good rules. And when we hear in the public, oh, these games are too complicated, I don't understand the rules, I must say, no, It's not the problem of the players, it's the problem of the publishers, and I'm not excluding myself in the problem of the designers to make sure that their rules get understood.

And of course, that cycles back to when I write up rules to make sure that I, and this is a good position, that I actually define my rules in the processes so that they can easily be written up. So my first write-up of the rules would happen very early, sometimes even before the game has played for the first time. already shows me if I can't say simple things in two sentences and something is wrong with the layout of the design and very often it also guides me to say how can I make this simpler and guides me in my design processes. Yes, no, I think that's just a wonderful principle that writing down the rules early, not necessarily because they're going to be finalized that way, because they're certainly not, but to help refine, hey, how complicated is this game, how easy is it to explain.

And I also try to, for my side, I also early on try to write like, you know, the kind of the hook of the game, right? What's the elevator pitch? What's the heart of like what's going to be exciting about it? Because if I can't explain that in two sentences, then I'm also off track, right? Why are you playing and how do you play?

I would write down the full rules, actually. So this has two reasons. One is when I, When I get into the second stage of designing, which is play testing. Of course, we need a prototype. The prototype I'm doing looks relatively nice already. So there would be clip art on it. Of course, not original artwork.

There would be clip art on it. The cards, boards would all be laid out how I see it to be laid out. It doesn't have to be masterpieces of artwork, but it is there. And then we play it, when I change things, I would all. also seen, this is misleading, this is not the right color, oh, these two characters look the same. So there are lots of things which get, it's not just the mechanic, it's the whole appearance and the whole coming together of all aspects of the game in an iterative process.

And that is, of course, also the rules, and therefore the rules will be adjusted. And it also, the other important thing of that is I have my famous, everybody's heard about them, or many people have heard about them, my famous drawers, many drawers where I have all my designs in. And sometimes it happens that a game gets into the background because other things get priorities. And if you go back after three months to a game and you have played it in many different versions and you haven't got a write-up, you have no hope of finding out what was the latest version you played. Yes, yes. No, that is certainly valuable. But I actually want to dig in because I've agreed 100% and the rules, tips on writing up the rules are great. I want to make sure I heard you correctly. So when you're even for your very first testing of a game, you will make a nicer prototype that's that laid out, you'll actually invest some time and energy into making it look nice and feel the way you would want it to. A lot of times, both myself and a lot of the guests I've had on this podcast, kind of take the opposite approach, right? They try to make as quick and dirty a prototype as plus. to reduce your investment in something you know is going to change. Can you talk to me a little bit about why you invest that way? And I mean, again, you're the most prolific designer I think I've ever talked to.

So I'm curious then how do you create so much if you're investing so much in those early prototypes? Well, it is a strength and the weakness as many times. There is a danger to fall in love with your brainchild initially and invest much research and much thinking about details. and when it comes on the table that you see that the basic principles do not work. So this is mainly about the first part of the design where everything happens in the head. So for me it's sitting there, closing my eyes, seeing myself in a playtest situation, a game situation.

So I have a player to the left, play it to the right, and it's my turn. And so I see the elements there, and I just think about what do I do in my turn, because a game consists of turns and interesting turns, and why is it interesting to play? Why do I have many choices? Why can I take a decision timely? Because for other players, what do I do when the next player takes their turn? Am I just sitting and waiting? So it happens in my head.

And, of course, my games, when they come to this stage, always play perfectly in my head, and then comes the moment of truth. But they are well thought through and they are well discussed when they come to paper. But for me, I cannot separate the appearance of the game from the soul of the game. Because when I design a game,

I sit in front of the PC and I design the board and design the piece, And it all goes at the same time. And so a lot of times, the design aspects, the physical design aspects, will influence the software, so to speak, the mechanisms, and vice versa. It just gets one whole integrated thing. It's not you design something and then thereafter, you have to press it in its closing. So the closing grows with it. And I've seen many times that, I mean, even down to, I'm currently working on an electronic game again,

and you also have a board with many different locations and even the naming of the locations and how do I show it? Oh, this sounds like this and how do I show, let's say, a cathedral and why does this look like a monastery? And can I differentiate it? Well, players know the difference. So there's a lot flowing in in this process, which makes it very easy for me. when I've reached a final stage then to make a final prototype of it. Some of the horror things are when I use easy materials, and it's a card game, and I have standard cards, and we play,

and then the game is finished. And then I need to start doing all the graphics and so on and say, well, will that really work? And then you're always in this, because you're not then testing the graphics and testing the appearance with it. And I try to test everything at the same time. So I think this is a... strengths when designing things, but it is also a weakness, as I started out, because you can go down a lot of blind alleys and you can waste a lot of time. It's fun, but you can waste a lot of time by over-perfectioning, it's not even a word, by being over-perfectionate on aspects which later play no role. And yes. Yeah, yeah. Well, I mean, I don't think you can escape from going down rabbit holes and dead ends in the design process. I think it's an interesting.

So what I heard is that you seem particularly skilled at being able to do those early iterations in your head and do the mental play test to kind of work through kinks to get to the point where your physical prototypes can be a little bit more refined than most people's first first prototypes. And I'm very actually, so there's a couple of things I'd want to dig through. Now you have, you mentioned your drawers, which I've heard about, but maybe. it's worth talking a little bit about for those in the audience that haven't. And understanding what the sort of pipeline looks like for you, from kind of inspiration to how long you spend in the mental prototyping process to a physical prototype, just kind of walking through a little bit. I think I've heard elsewhere you have five or six games operative at a time,

just a little bit more in the kind of granularity of how that process flows for you. When I used to have 50 drawers, and then the pandemic came along with we couldn't test. So then I simply secretly bought another 50. And so it's a plague because my issue is not to have good ideas. When you are with your mind in the game design world, you have lots of ideas. And you explore something. You have another idea and opportunities come up and then a publisher wants something.

And so it's the initial idea. And it's not just a five minutes thought. It is going into it and having something which can become a prototype. Sometimes it's not yet a prototype, will go into one of these drawers. So this is the absolute fun bit to think of something new and to create it. What then becomes a bottleneck is to find enough time to go through this whole design process and make, I obviously, a perfect product out of that. And that takes a long time that goes sometimes over here.

years and certainly many months. And of course, no sane person, not even I, being non-sane, can work on so many games. So for me, I work on games when the game comes onto the table at least once a week. And we are playtest with post-pandemic, so we're playtesting almost every day again. And that means I see many different groups that makes the games. robust as we discussed and I can drive processes quite quickly because every day it would be a different group. That means and then of course when we play an evening or Sunday afternoon Saturday afternoon a session is usually four five hours so it's not only one game we would play more than one game and then

these will be on the run and then I after play testing it with more the core group which are experienced players I would also play the game of course with a target group or families. And that means not every game can be played at all instances. And that means usually there are four or five games on the making within a week. And then some will fall behind, some others come up. And of course, there is, as I mentioned, I'm currently working on electronic games.

So that's a big hole at the moment because that takes a lot of time. It's a lot of fun. I mean, I used to be responsible for ITs of banking and so on. which is different to making an electronic simulator on a laptop to reflect the game. But it takes me into the zone, and then I'm lost for some days in that zone. But that brings me to the other point. When you said, what's the flow and what's the priorities and what comes to the foreground in these drawers?

There are, of course, these which are in final stages, where essentially the tuning is on very minute and little details. And these do not need much preparation. So we play them one evening and look at them for an hour and change some things and then can be played next evening. These are the final ones. And there are the early ones where it really cracks enormously and you have enormous earthquakes after every play. And you need to redo a lot of things and that takes much more time. and so I would have those and these.

The main part, and that's the real challenge, is that I have, of course, I have color coatings on these drawers. I have some drawers which I believe have ideas, principles, and projects in there, which could be more groundbreaking. I mean, that's always the ambition. You want to do something which revolutionizes the industry. Of course, not every design can do it. And if you manage to do it every now and then, I think you have to be very, I have to be very happy.

But there are some in there. And this is the point which you cannot really do. The games is also business. So there is not only sitting there and dreaming of games. Yes. There are contracts. There are approvals of things. There are royalty reports.

There are thousands of things. They're up to Texas. So thousands of things which get into the way. and really having time for working on these bigger designs, even so I do it full time, I realize that I need to go away. I need to leave the operational business, and I frequently take two weeks out, go somewhere offsite to a different location, take some kind of a holiday cabin or something.

I don't test there. I just be there by myself, and I will then deeply work. from early to late and have the mind full with these designs. And people always think I go on holiday. I don't because when I came back after these two weeks, I need a holiday. Design, when it grabs you, is really taking up all your energy. And it's nothing else has place during that time because the mind is full. and I'm completely depleted of everything else.

I can't take any decisions. I can't do anything because everything melts into this design. So many different aspects, what comes up at what times, and when the fares come up, of course, then there are other things to be done than designing. But the challenge is really to find enough time, testing time and thinking time to move those designs on which are most promising. And that's the advantage.

And I'll finish my long answer. And that's the advantage of 100 drawers because those you don't fly that nicely, they just lie in a drawer and then you find that, oh, I haven't looked at this one for half a year or a year. So then you take it out and you either kill it or you work on it again. So at least it avoids the danger of falling in love with some of the designs which do not work out or the sunk cost fallacy, as I've invested so much time, it has to work now. This is naturally a natural selection process,

all the ones which are exciting and work best come to the forefront. Yeah, no, there's definitely a huge advantage of having a lot of projects running at a time. You're much less precious of any given one. And I think I just want to underscore that importance of carving out that time for the deep work and the deep design work and cultivating regular testing and opportunities.

Those things are absolutely critical. So it's amazing that you've dialed that into such a degree. I could talk about the process stuff forever, but I want to jump on the thread. You've talked about electronic games a couple of times. You've designed a few of those over the years. You're working on more clearly now. How do you think about the process of making an electronic-based game

versus a normal tabletop game? How does that differentiate in your mind in terms of how you approach that project? Well, if you really look into digital games, meaning apps on the smartphones or other online play games. That's a very different world to the board games. And these different worlds are two different industries, almost. They don't really overlap from the publisher side.

Very few overlap there. And so the real digital side is more a windfall or a side product on our set games get taken over into apps and who made playable online. I have done some designs for apps, and they were very educational for me to see what's required there. When I'm talking about electronic games, I'm more talking, starting point, the board game,

and then enhancing it with electronic aspects. It's probably the most well-known of our games is who was it. It won the Children's Game of the Year and the German Children's Game Prize in 2008. and it's still our, well, it is over the time our best-selling game of all types. So it's an expensive game and it has sold many copies. But it's fascinating because you are still sitting around the table, you are playing, and it's simple enough through the electronics, to the software,

that kids can play, but it's also interesting for families, and you are playing in a cooperative game. even the more little ones can be helped because you can naturally help them because you have an interest to help them, not an interest to not let them lose, but to help them support your course of winning. And so there are lots of interesting aspects you can do with the electronics in there because it creates the atmosphere, it takes away all the complicated stuff accounting, and it makes much more variety because you don't have to handle it. The administration goes out of the game process.

So there are many good opportunities. And then people ask me always, well, are the digital games the death of the board games? No, not at all. I mean, our games are a mirror of our lives. Our lives is full of electronics. I mean, look at your washing machine, look, whatever you want to look at. There is electronics in there, yes. But nevertheless, you're still doing your washing by putting it into the machine, yes?

And so I think there is big opportunities to enhance plays. There are not too many publishers who go with this route, and it needs to be very well chosen because there's a risk, there is a higher investment. But there are opportunities there. Of course, people have been burned by using smartphone apps for games because the burden afterwards is that the publisher needs to keep that alive. and I have a nice game of mine here with the publisher after very few years

has given up to maintain the app and so the game is completely unplayed. So this is a dangerous bit of taking the so-called easy route and taking the standard available hardware software. So I'm more convinced of having real specific hardware software in there because then the game is forever.

It just plays. And you can much more then look at what you need. And that is essentially the secret for my secret. When I look at digital games, I first of all explore completely the digital or whatever else. The additional part is the complete possibilities and the potential of this medium. Because I want to use it 100%. We pay for it.

It's an extra cost. And so I want to squeeze out as much as I can. So it starts with the understanding of this and then bringing this to the foreground. So you're sort of taking what the new medium provides and sort of turning that around in your head in the design process and saying, okay, how do I get the most out of this piece since this is the thing I'm investing in? That makes a lot of sense. I'm actually curious in some sense selfishly here because, so Richard Garfield and I co-created a game called SoulForge Fusion, which uses digital printing, right, to be able to create algorithms. We're one-of-a-kind cards and decks. And I'm curious if you spent any time thinking about that technology and the design space there

and if that's of something of interest to you. I have not been working on that specific technology, the printing technologies. I know there is a publisher here in southern Germany who, well, it's Ludovac, who has, does a lot of production here and who has, I think they also have factory in America, who have the printing abilities and I actually got a tour to see what the possibilities are. But it's not just the possibility of I can do that. It's also finding the right publisher who then wants to do that because if you go into a very specific technology, specific production method,

the range of publishers you can approach. It gets more narrow and it's best to start all. also is a publisher, yes, and then the range gets... And then you are getting into a project where you almost have to do it because you're committed to doing it, you had a publisher and board. So giving a long answer, which I could have done shortly or much shorter, no, I've not worked on this specific part which you're exploring with Richard. But the important thing is, I think it is very important that you find something innovative

as an entry point and then start the design of it. There are lots of different entry points. You found a nice and interesting one. Keep at it. And Richard is certainly not unexperienced in what he's doing on the card side. Yes, yes. And so I will let's, there's a lot of places to go here. Let's talk about the card side for a minute.

You know, when it comes to, you know, we talked about Richard, obviously, you know, innovated the trading card game category. I have found one of your games that I really enjoyed, Blue Moon, that felt like your take on a trading card game to me. It felt like the kind of hard, there was rules for customization, there were factions, there was a simplicity to it, that was your elegance. Is that kind of what was an inspiration for you for that?

I'd love to know more about that project and how you thought about building something that was, a boxed game that also had its own customization kind of built in. Yeah. I had one go at trading card games, the collectible card games. It wasn't that one, it was what then ended up as the Lord series as Fantasy Flight, so the Lord games. But the feedback I got from Fantasy Flight at that time, Chris Peterson said, well, your designs are not suited for collectible card games. Your designs are too balanced. and in a collectible cart, you of course need an imbalance and you make the next generation of cards, you introduce new imbalances so that the meta game works, yes. And I think it is very important to understand

where your abilities lie and where you are not so strong. And I certainly am not strong. Well, I've never really tried, but I think it would be foolish for me to think that I have done some successful games, so now I will do a collective card game. There is, Jack Welsh one says,

don't compete where you don't have a competitive advantage. I think I would not have a competitive advantage on that one. So coming back to, so what doesn't have to do everything and one has to say there are one's limitations. It doesn't matter how many games you have published. Nobody can do everything, yes. And that's good.

And it's just understanding your limitations and not trying to go into fields where you are completely ignorant, but feel you are the master. So now back to Blue Moon. Blue Moon was not intended to be a collectible card game. Blue Moon actually started out as the idea of building an own semantic universe. The whole universe of the Blue Moon and the people in the Blue Moon and everything that happens.

And so there's quite a bit of, there has even been a whole book of fiction written about the Blue Moon story. and we tried to build that into the games. So the idea was really to have these different people playing against each other and with the story background and makes them very different. What we did not understand is how much testing that actually needed because every people needs to be tested against everyone. As soon as you change when you need to do the other one. And I remember that David Farkar got very much,

unfortunately late David Farkar got very much. involved into play testing this he played it a whole year long every lunch break and every people getting is another people and so on so that was very test intense but it was a great experiment and a great learning because it was kind of touching something different coming from a different angle coming from the story building these individual things which you can combine by far not as complex as collectible card games but but I had enough of a challenge with it.

Well, it's interesting to me. So you talked about kind of going where you have a competitive advantage. And I think my interpretation of a lot of your work is one of your world-class strengths is that ability to distill things down to their essence and really present something in a very core and refined way. And that's why Blue Moon struck me because I felt like it was a really, you know, it distills a lot of the things forget the balance side. That's not as important to me right now. It's distilled a lot of the joy of that experience into something that's very refined. I've heard you say this in terms of, you know, you're describing yourself as a scientist. And is that kind of what does it, what does it take to kind of

when you're approaching these? And this may not be an easy question to answer. So feel free to pivot, if not. But this idea that, you know, how do you refine that concept down? How do you take most designers what they start with something and they make it more complex? And it feels like you're able to take something that can be very complex, whether it be a legacy game concept or, you know, card game concept or a drafting concept and bring it into something that just like sings and is like a really polished diamond. How does that work for you? How do you think about that sort of thing? This is the great thing, again, about our industry that people come with many different backgrounds. And as you said, I'm the scientist. I've started mathematics. I have a scientific mind. And of course, science

tries to bring order into things by generating or discovering, introducing general principles. And that's what I like to try with my rules. So I want to introduce general principles, rules very simple, but the depths of play comes from the interaction of the players. There are other people who are more the storyteller. So I reduce redundancy. There are the storytellers that are the other people who increase redundancy and blow the things up.

And my design, sometimes I felt as abstract, but you have very little administration to do. In the bigger designs, you have lots of event cards, lots of these semantic cards, lots of these semantics. For me, this is a kind to my taste. And tastes are very different. There's no better or worse taste. These are too overwhelming for me

from an administration and handling point of view. And so when I see them, say, why do I need this and why do I need this? and why do I need this? It's not really necessary. And of course, I have the ambition to try to open the games up, the doors to the games up to many people. I want to reach many people, bring the enjoyment of the games to many people.

And so, yes, it was what I did with El Dorado, with the deck building game or with my city, with the legacy games, is deliberately going there and say, okay, I would have liked to invent and establish the genre, but you, unfortunately, many very talented and very excellent people out there, ingenious people out there, so you can't have it all for yourself. But the second best you can do is probably take some of this and give it a new direction or add something new to it.

And that's what I have very deliberately done with this. And it suits me very well because I can, this is what I like. I like simplicity and try to make the game deep out of a few rules. because you set up the complexity, you set up the players against each other, or do it cooperative, but I don't need all the little details. My mind doesn't want them, so I drive them out.

Yes, that kind of elegance and simplicity and boiling things out into their essence is definitely one of the design aesthetics. I appreciate the most, and it's the hardest to do well. So I guess then maybe, let's dig into a couple of specific examples of these things. I think there are some areas. I think I'd like to cover kind of scoring systems and then talk a little bit about kind of auction drafting and kind of bidding as a category. And you know,

you're you're you're very well known for innovating scoring systems and using those to drive play. You know, Tigris and Euphrates probably the most famous example, though there are plenty to choose from in terms of where your lowest ranking category is the thing that scores, which forces you to care about a lot of variety of everything that's going on. How do you approach scoring systems, or is there a way that you, will it often be a starting point for you? Or will other, how do you, how does you use that to drive player behavior or create, create the incentives that you want?

It's very difficult to say what a starting point is. I mean, something innovative. Usually the scoring, many often the storing system isn't, because it comes in later in the process. But for me, the ambition is, okay, so can I not do a simple hook which simply turns everything on its head and suddenly it's, you know, you mean, you have a very relatively, you know, it's, Euphredian Tigers is not a very simple game. But if you have this way you get points in different colors and all, and suddenly you say, but only your weakest color counts. And it puts everything on its head because we say, okay, I've already got enough red cubes points, but they could get another seven. here, or only one green, but I'm short on green.

And so suddenly it puts the whole situation into perspective, and you have very different objectives than just maximizing everything. So this is, and yes, you said it very much how I believe, it's the scoring drives the gameplay. That's what I want to do, yes? So if I need green, then seven red should not temper. to me, and I need the one green. But it is counterintuitive because usually it's just more and more.

And so this is an aspect which sometimes comes later during the game. I can say, okay, now how do I put this extra twist in there in Samurai? Yes, you have to dominate one of the dimensions so you can be on the farming side, on the Buddha side, or on the, and so one of these you have to dominate. You have to have more than everybody else. But that's boring because that makes a very extreme strategy. So then you say, but that's only for you to qualify for winning. What really counts then is how much you have done in the others.

So if you are trying to get too much of others, then you might not qualify. You might have the best others, but you're not there. Or you might qualify easily and safely, but then, and you don't know because this uncertainty, you can't just count it out, it's not open. So it's all these twists which are, these are the pearls and these are the precious to find. But yes, I think they're very important to differentiate a game and make it exciting. Yeah, and I think that ties it nicely to the other topic I kind of want to bring in here, this kind of auctioning, drafting, and bidding, where that differential value between the players

is one of the things that drives and makes that so exciting, right? that suddenly this single card tile, whatever, right? I mean, I've played probably more hours of raw than maybe any of your other games, although it's tough. It's a lot of hours I've played. And so there's the uncertainty of the tension of when this thing might end and the ramping up of that, the difference of what a card or tile or thing is worth to me compared to somebody else, how that scoring kind of ramps up and increases towards the end.

So there's a lot of elements that come to that. If you're advising someone to approach a game of this category, are there other kinds of principles or tips that you'd advise in terms of how one should approach making a really exciting game with one of these? It can cover all or cover an individual of this kind of drafting, auctioning, bidding type systems. I have two non-points on this first. First of all, don't approach it because they're a bit out of fashion. They were very fashion in the 90s. And the second one is if you want to do it, study mathematics and then study auction theory, and you find lots of examples. None of these are helpful or relevant.

There is something to it. In the 90s, I mean, I made a number of the auction games and modern art probably being the arch type of it with so many different auctions in there. And you mentioned Rha. I mean, what fascinates me about RAS is there's again a twist in there. I like the twists. These are fundamental twists. These are not side twists. The twist in Rha, it's an auction game.

You have only three values, three sons, which you can bid during one epoch, one kingdom. And when you auction, when you bid for something, you're not only getting the tiles for your civilization, but you're also getting the sons for the next kingdom, for the next epoch. And so whenever somebody wins the bid, they put their sons. So there are bidding value in the middle, and with the next portion, this one is handed out for the next round. So if somebody gets something with a very low sun, then you know you will be weak next epoch. And therefore, you need to have something quite valuable to get in tiles. Whereas if there is the top sun in there, I've seen people just bidding if there was no tile at all.

I just say, I want the sun. I want to be strong next time. And so it's not just the values you get, but you also get. future bidding power and weighing this off against each other is this, it's so easily done, but it is so tricky when you play it. And that's exactly these hooks. I mean, they're easily done to say only the biggest color counts in Tigerston phrase. But it's so really difficult to plan ahead what you get in some. So these are what I want to build into all games and I've built them into these auction games. Now, there are a, a, a, you know, a

lot of very exciting books about auction auction theory which i've only studied recently so i didn't this is not my starting point for for the for the games because it becomes too subtle and too detailed these different auction mechanisms but you can get inspiration from there but i think the the design about auction games is much more to avoid some pitfalls you need a hook. Just whoever beats the most gets it and whoever gets the bomb bits the most gets it. It's kind of boring.

So you need some extra quirk. But one thing is very important. Some people love to bid and love to win bits. And if you allow, from a system point of view, that one player destroys the game by unreasonably always overbidding and cutting the other people out from the game, then the game does not work.

So you need to have kind of something defeating that people run out of resources, but then if they overbid once for ignorance, they shouldn't be out of the game. So you need to find something that people, if they are unreasonable and want to win everything, hurt themselves and are limited by the system. And so that everybody, so that I can do a reasonable bid, if everybody is overbidding, and we see that in bubbles anywhere on the markets, yes. But if everybody's overbidding it, I want to play reasonable, then I just sit there and can never

win an auction. This is the very risky thing when you play auction games with many players, because usually only one player wins the auction. So when you play with four or five players, you can take quite a while you're involved in the process until you actually get a result from it. And so, and that led to me experimenting with having in Amon Ray, for example, having everybody winning some in the auction. have a simultaneous auction where everybody bids and if they overbid you, you get your token back, you bid something else. And then nobody wants to change anything anymore, then the situation is stabilized and everybody gets what they want.

So the last player always gets it, so to speak, for free because he goes somewhere else and is, okay, you overbid me there, I go somewhere there, I don't pay anything for it, you get it for free. And so it's a self-balancing mechanism. And that is interesting because everybody's in it, everybody gets something. So I've said a lot about auction systems. It wasn't very structured, but it's just aspects which come to mind. Of course, you said more, you said drafting, bidding is auction.

So of course you can disguise auctions in many different ways. And I think that's also the right way at the moment where pure auction systems are not so much popular or not so much liked. So there are different trends and different likings. In the gaming industry of the gamers, in the population of the community of those who are multipliers and shout aloud, that doesn't necessarily mean that that is the case for the general public, where you can get very big sales, but where you have lots of hidden treasures, which are not being recognized or not being seen worthy of recognizing by the people who shout the loudest. Yeah, so that's a great topic.

we're running long time, but since you brought it up, I think understanding how do you think about trends, right? Even if you're excited about auction games now, it's out of vogue, so you've got to disguise it if you want it. And how do you think about, you know, playing to that vocal audience, the board game geek enthusiasts of the world versus more family crowds versus mass market? Like, how do you think about when you're putting your energy into designs, you know, assuming you don't have a contract with a publisher or whatever, where do you see the industry going? and how do you approach those kinds of trends? I mean, this is the real challenge. Essentially, it's impossible. Everybody knows it's impossible to foresee trends and to see where it going.

The only people who don't believe it's impossible are the marketing people who always tell you what it is. They can explain everything wonderful in hindsight, but they never get the future, right? So you have to ask for the hindsight as well. So, sorry. Predicting the future in hindsight is a really great skill. I have that one too. Yes. Yeah, I'm explaining why everything happened in hindsight is very good.

But you can never prove that that was a real reason. The proof is if your models work, if you can predict the future and they can't. So, of course, the ambition, we talked about it, to set new trends, to find some groundbreaking new, as Richard did. Richard, this collective card case is the archetype. of that, I mean, creating whole industries of it.

Me telling Richard that I think magic will not fly, most my greatest blunder probably. But yeah, it's maybe most too innovative. I didn't see the potential of it. So that's so much about expert opinions, yes.

So that brings us back to trends again. So sometimes trends are just lucky occurrences when you have a big quiz show or the big brother or something. something and it suddenly is a good hit on TV or something in the first public it, and it's a big sell. And then all the others run after it, yes? I mean, it's the same with the exit games, yeah. We see. So it was a big trend, but it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. And a lot of, I mean, a lot of people said

abstract games don't don't sell. And then we had blockers and we had ingenious, yes? And then suddenly it took off and people understood that. I mean, not to speak about cooperative games. I do actually claim that I made the first serious and really workable cooperative game with the Lord of the Rings. This is the Lord of the Rings game from. Yeah, I love that game. I absolutely brought it.

Because I remember that even the jury for the game of the year, the journalist said, You can play it once and then it's boring, yes. And so how can this work? This was completely new novelty, yes. And then afterwards they gave me the price for gaming literature. So this is the issue with innovation. If you're too innovative, people don't find the access to it. You may just fail because people don't take the gap.

So when you talk to publishers, they always want innovation, but not too much, of course. It still needs to be in the normal realm. So creating a new trend is essentially impossible. I mean, if you have a groundbreaking, what did I think about legacy? What kind of a nonsense is this when I saw the first game? I didn't believe, I mean, yes,

so I think I should always look at these which I create as non-flyers, see as non-flyers like collectible card games or legacy and change my mind and jump on them. But staying with the topic, it is extremely difficult to forecast. I think it is impossible to forecast. The future is not determined. Otherwise, future would be determined if you could forecast it.

So it's just watching and seeing what there is. And very often, the situation has proven that you don't have to be the first one to do something. I mean, you look at Steve Jobs and you look at Steve Jobs and you look at, things where people see there is a trend, there is something good, and then use your expertise to see some mushrooms which popped up somewhere and really culture them and nurture them. And so that's another way to do things as I did with El Dorado and with my city. But it's impossible. I think trends are essentially lucky or they are driven by all of all life because technology

goes in there. So new possibilities what is available. I mean, what artificial intelligence does, we don't know and how that influences gaming. How would that be integrated in the game will all need to be proven. Yeah, I think that's, I think that's

right. You know, both the, you know, if there is a new category, new trend, new thing, is there something you can apply your specific expertise to to cultivate your corner of that new universe, you know, spending a lot of time I like I really do try to focus on what are the new technologies and what is available now that wasn't before because that's most

likely going to be the fertile ground right and even in scientific exploration a lot of people end up discovering the same thing within reasonably close periods of time because the precursor knowledge and the precursor technology is there so it's ripe for the taking and so I think that's a really great space to focus on but I have yeah I have found that the times where I try to consciously chase a trend has never worked well for me. It's always, I have to be something I'm genuinely excited about or there's something, you know, technologically that I'm really interested in. You have to be true to yourself. If you start bending yourself and trying to create something

to please others or win awards, it's not going to happen. Yeah. Okay. That's a, I think a great place to start to wrap up. I know we only have a little bit of time. Is there anything that you would like to say to the audience or places where they can go to find your games or hear about your latest stuff. Is there anywhere we'd like to direct people before we wrap up? I think Bortium Geek is the one place which is unmatched and where people can get all news. And my message is just don't stop playing and enjoy the games. Take the games you like best. It doesn't matter who invented them, who designed them. Find your own likings and play games. This is one of the best things we can do in today's world with all the madness going on.

I think as long as people sit around one table and play a game together, the world will be a better place. Yes, that's wonderful. And you have created so much of that opportunity for play, connection, and joy, for myself, for millions and millions of people all around the world. So I just want to say thank you. And thank you so much for joining me today. Thank you. I say thank you to you. And I say thank you to all the players.

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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.