Think Like A Game Designer - Theresa Duringer — UI as Game Design, Onboarding Without Friction, and the Ethics of AI (#100)

Episode Date: January 29, 2026

Theresa Duringer is the owner and CEO of Temple Gates Games, a San Francisco–based digital board game studio known for best-in-class adaptations of modern tabletop games. Her team has brought Ascension to VR and developed acclaimed digital versions of Dominion, Race for the Galaxy, Shards of Infinity, and more, with a relentless focus on speed, clarity, and intuitive UI. Theresa works closely with designers and publishers to translate complex tabletop systems into digital experiences that feel natural, responsive, and faithful to the original games, helping players around the world connect and play together online. In this episode, she shares insights on what makes a great digital adaptation, why performance and UX are inseparable from game design, and how to bridge the gap between physical and digital play without losing what makes tabletop special. 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 Teresa Durenger. Teresa is the owner and CEO of Temple Gate Games, a digital board game development studio based out of San Francisco. Her team is known for digitizing incredible board games like Ascension for Virtual Reality. The only deck building game in virtual reality, as far as I know, Dominion, Race for the Galaxy,

roll for the Galaxy, and my personal favorite shards of infinity. These games are incredibly well executed. I have known Teresa for many years, and she is an incredible polymath. She's very good at so many different aspects of the job, and we jump around to all different parts of game design of running an indie studio. We go into her background working for EA and how she came up in the unglamorous but critically important job of QA and the importance of UI design, how to think about designing for games on mobile versus games on the tabletop versus games on VR. We talk about AI and specifically the incredibly good AI neural network designs that she's used

long before anybody else knew about things like JetGBT and Genert of AI in her games, as well as what the future of gaming looks like in this space. We talk about many of the interesting challenges and tradeoffs of designing games as someone who makes board games and turns them digital, what the design challenges are that come from that. And I have a lot of insights on that as well, because I've now worked with multiple teams on this thing. So it's a really interesting space and a really great way to see what it's like to be

an indie developer, to have shared passions of tabletop design and tabletop games and digital games and how those overlap. Teresa is so much fun to talk to. I absolutely adore her and that came through in this podcast. She's got an incredible amount of insight to share. And so without any further ado, here is Teresa Dernger. Hello and welcome. I am here with Teresa Dernger. Teresa, it's so great to finally get you on the podcast. Hey, thanks for having me. You know, I've got so many like good memories with you and stories to talk about ever since our, what we met up at GenCon and we talked and we worked on the Ascension VR game and I want to dig into like all of that and your whole company's history. But sort of in, I didn't know actually a ton about your background before you started Templegate.

And I did some research leading into this. And you have a lot more kind of big, big tech gaming experience than I had realized. So maybe let's start people before we get into the fun of the fun and challenges, of course, of running an indie studio. So what got you into working with the big boys? And let's get a little bit into your origin story. Oh, yeah, sure. So my family is like a video game development family. My mom worked at electronic arts when I was growing up.

And technically I got my first paycheck from EA over 20 years ago, probably, from EA, just doing some like after school QA on a project she was working on. So I've been in video games for a really long time and, you know, my dad's programmer, my stepdad's programmer. And right out of college, I didn't know what else to do. So I applied for a job at Electronic Arts, which my mom was no longer working there. And I didn't like ask her for any favors on that. But I've definitely been accused of Nepo baby. And but anyway, I got like a QA job at EA and started working at.

Maxis and got involved with this incredible team working on Spore and worked on SimCity and the Sims. And then I started my first company making games with another person I had met at Maxis. And we made a game called Cannon Brawl and that was about three years in development. And then I started another company with some other people that had met at Maxis in the board game club. And we are now making digital board games with that second company. Okay. All right. There's a lot.

Yeah, that's great. It was a great, very quick overview. So I'm going to pull it some threads here. I think you might be the first guest I've had that comes from the legacy of game designers. So that's a, it's a really interesting.

What was it like growing up with like parents that made games? Like, was that as awesome as it sounds? Or was it just kind of, oh, they're just going to work and doing the thing? No, it was awesome.

It was amazing. I think there was a program at electronic arts at the time where they would just sort of load up their employees with video games for free. There was like a point system and you could spend the points on consoles. You could spend the points on games. I think anything that was an EA game was just free. And then anything that was like a game by another publisher had a points value. So I think they wanted their employees to be familiar. So there was just a budget for that.

So we just had more games than we could. we knew what to do with. I'd give them out for Halloween. But the caveat was like, we weren't allowed to play them. I would definitely be trick-or-treating at your house. Oh, my goodness. Yeah, we weren't actually allowed to play them.

My mom was kind of strict. So it was like this forbidden close but far. Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. Say more now because this is now really interesting. So your parents are like, they're like drug dealers, but they won't let you get hooked on the supply? What's going on? Like, why are they not letting you play these things?

And how are they squaring that circle of like their job is to make, make this, but their kids, not good enough for their kids. You know, I mean, I think I didn't have a great amount of, like, self-discipline in terms of, like, I think if I could redo it, I might, like, set the console down and show my mom I could have a disciplined, like, life and do my homework, but I think I was a little too into it. I see. So you were really hooked on games from early on, and your parents were worried, not about games in general, but specifically about you playing games.

They're like, this girl's going to throw away your life and just make games all the time. That's all she's going to do. And now here you are. Okay. And now here I am. Okay. All right. Fascinating.

So I love, you know, you know, you had this story comment like people thought it might be like nepotism. You go into EA. But like you started in QA or you started at the bottom rung. I felt like if there was some nepotism involved, you probably would have gotten a better starting position. That's how I feel. Yeah. Yeah. So, you know, and I definitely heard other stories kind of like this, Ben Brod's story, I think, was similar. You know, kind of started, it's a pizza delivery guy and then got his way into QA and then showed some talents and kind of worked his way up.

And, you know, eventually, obviously had great success. And so I think there's, there's some, you know, one of the things I like to dig into is like the kind of lessons you learn from taking on different roles. And one of the things I love about you is you have so many different roles that you inhabit and excel at. And so let's just let's walk through some more, you know, because I just want to linger on this part for a while because I don't know this part as well about you. You know, what did you learn during that time at QA there? And then I want to dig into some time working on, you know, SimCity and Sims and sports and all those games, which I also really enjoy and are pretty fascinating. Yeah. So I am getting more comfortable just like explaining that I am a generalist. And I think it's, it's often in many different industries.

I think it's a dirty word and people try to pretend that they're specialists even when they're not. And I think I'm just embracing this generalist identity, which is like complicated and, you know, it takes too long to explain it to people. And I think a lot of times when people meet me, but probably other generalists, especially at small companies, you know, people meet me a lot of times in the context of a gaming convention and I may be working at a booth. and I think they think, oh, that's the booth person. But, you know, I'm also the person who, you know, negotiates our IP deals and does our artwork and does our audio.

I mean, it's just like at a small company, people have to wear like lots of hats in order for the company to exist and be able to pay bills without being insolvent. Yeah, I mean, it's funny that that is the frame that you bring to this because to me, like, I absolutely consider myself a generalist, and that's like why I'm able to run a small company, right? I couldn't do that if I was just, you know, an engine designer or just, you know, someone who talks on the camera or whatever.

You know, I think that that skill set is incredibly valuable. So it's interesting that there's a pejorative sense to it, I think that that you perceive in the industry. I think it's just, I think people only have a certain bandwidth for understanding other people, understanding anything. And, you know, I think you are such a great example of a generalist. I mean, you're one of the only people I've worked with that's both the publisher and the designer. You know, that's, that wasn't like a Kickstarter self-publisher situation, but like a, you know, like a serious publication operation happening and designer.

Yeah, it's, I often wonder what, you know, when you think about the role and I'll put this question back to you, but I'll give you my kind of thoughts on it first is like, you know, the role and values of being a general. versus being a specialist, right? There's obvious advantages to being a specialist in that, like, I can just get as good as I can at this one craft and really, really focused down, right? I've often wondered in the counterfactual world, because when I first made ascension, I got offered, I won't say by who, but I got offered to be bought out at that time. And then just like, they'll buy the company, they'll pay me, you know, they'll buy all my stock, they'll pay me a royalty. And I would just be a game designer again, right, after building up this thing. And I considered, it was one of those tough choices, right? And I'm really happy with

the way things turned out. I kept the company and kept things moving. But I wonder how much, like, how much better of a game designer might I be in the world where I just specialized in that? What my life would be like, it's impossible to know. But on the flip side, you know, so maybe I'd have more games design. Maybe I'd have a little bit better refining of the craft. On the flip side, my ability to know about how production works and how marketing works and how to manage a team and like being able to run the booth and see people playtesting and managing and seeing how games demo and what that turnaround looks like and understanding all that stuff, I think also makes me a better designer, right? Because I'm able to understand all these different aspects and how my design

choices impact the product and impact the marketing and impact everything that happens within a project. So to me, I think there's real advantage to both. How do you think about that now in your role of having run a company now for, what is this now? You've been doing for 10 years, more? How long have you been at, with Temple Gates specifically? Well, Temple Gates started in a 2013. I started doing my own company, my first company in 2010. Okay, great. Yeah. So you're, okay, so it's actually very similar to me then, right? This is this is 15 years. We're celebrating the 15 year anniversary of Ascension, which is basically the kickoff of my company, give or take.

And so 15 years of doing this is an incredibly long time, incredibly difficult. So kudos to being able to keep on this track. I know, I know from virtual experience, how hard it is. So what do you think then in terms of, you know, you've chosen the role of, you know, entrepreneur slash, you know, small, indie studio slash specialists. How do you view the skill set that you've developed and where the strengths are, lessons learned? You know, it's funny.

I think, like, you were kind of mentioning the QA being sort of like the bottom rung or the sort of like lowest on the totem pole at the company. And, you know, that is the way they're paid. That is sort of the steam that they're granted and the prestige. But also, it's funny. I almost feel like there's this inverse correlation between the like sort of lowest, lowest in the totem pole and most valuable skills to have at a company

like marketing, QA, these are things that are not always given like the most prestigious appreciation. And yet these are like the skill sets that you build up. I mean, the skill of marketing a game is like, I mean, nobody's quite figured it out. I think it's a kind of a shifty thing to try to put your finger on the pulse of a culture and understand what is looking for and what's going to hit QA, being able to just sort of like, you know, have some amount of like brute force mentality to like, I'm going to be playing this game

a thousand times and I'm going to stick with it. And, you know, maybe I want to like look at something else right now. Too bad. You've got to just like keep going with it because that like repeated iteration is going to be that chisel that polishes the game into something really beautiful. And so just shout out to all of the like the people in the roles that are kind of like crapped on sometimes. And those are those are skills I'm, you know, so feel so lucky to have spent time developing those skills. Yeah, absolutely. Shout out to all the people doing the hard work of QA. I have been in that role myself because again, as your small company, you're like everybody's everybody all hands out deck. We're all QA now, right? That happens at periodic times. And so

It is critical because those, you know, I have, I often say, you know, the last 10% of a project takes 90% of the time. And because it's those little details and making sure that things work and making sure that the, you know, all the buttons are doing the intuitive thing and that things don't break. It's absolutely critical the difference between like a mediocre project and a great project. So I want to jump to now like a little bit more of our story and how I encountered you and some of the projects we worked on together because that's the stuff. I know the best and I love, again, I cannot recommend enough every game that you guys do. You execute super well. But the first time I met you was at GenCon and we had a, I believe it, correct me if I'm remembering, because this is now a while ago, but it was like we had an early preview of our

gift of the elements expansion. And you came to an event and we're there and you had immediately made an impression on us. and you were not just a fan that was coming by, but you actually had some pretty significant skills and were interested in somebody we wanted to work with. How do you remember that event? I kind of remember it differently. But I don't honestly trust my memory.

That will, so you might be right. Well, I'd love to hear your version of this because I also had to check with other people from my team because I wasn't super clear. I had it, I just, now as far as I'm concerned, we've always been working together it's always been really cool. But it was something like, again, yeah, tell me how,

tell me it from your perspective. And let's reconstruct the past here for a minute. So this is my memory. I was like completely obsessed with Ascension. It's probably my favorite game. And I think I signed up for the tournament at Jen Con. And I made it, I won my tournament or something. Anyway, somehow I found myself in like the world championships, I think.

And, um, and I didn't win. at all. But, you know, I sort of like got a chance to talk to some of the people. And I don't remember that you were there. I thought it was Gary. It was. It was Gary Arant for sure. Because he's who I talked to to to reconfirm these events. Because he was the person who flagged. I remember he flagged me and said, hey, you've got to meet this girl. And that's when I started my conversation with you. Yeah. So, so I believe that we started a conversation, maybe a little email while Gary might have like introed me to you through email. And we were working on VR games at the time.

And we had been toying with social VR. And we were finding that like just like in real life with a bunch of nerds, it's like awkward to socialize when there's no activity for me. And so like board games were like this, hey, like there could be an activity and it could be really fun. So let's explore some board games. And so when I got a chance to talk to you guys, I think I kind of pitched what if we did a VR version of Ascension.

That might have not happened right away, though. I think it's also possible that I just, like, showed you guys. I think I had, like, fan art that I had done of Ascension. I probably showed you guys. And anyways, at some point, I pitched doing a VR version of Ascension, and I believe we met up at South by Southwest. I came and saw a talk that you did was phenomenal at South by Southwest. And then I think

Yeah, we chat out of there. Yeah. And so I want to, and I'm not just doing this to come back down memory lane because I want to bring it. I would try to provide utility to the audience, not just utility and fun for me, which it's got to be both. But because there are steps here that are in fact, like repeatable for people out there, right? Like everybody that wants to get into the industry, wants to do things like the paying your dues and working for some other company and doing the roles. that nobody else wants to do or that are looked down upon to learn skills and meet and make connections because that's the most important thing.

In fact, not only do you learn the skills, but you learn the people that are good at what they do and do real good work and they learn and they meet you. And then you use that to build stuff and you just put things out there and build things. And that's what you did. You had already built a VR games and you had already done things and you already created art. And so that's what got my attention or got Gary's attention and it got my attention that, hey, she's not just talking because I've plenty of fans that talk about, oh, wouldn't it be cool there? But you had actually done things that were credible that showed to, hey, this is

someone who's a genuine fan and you'd show that you were a genuine fan and would take good care of the brand. You were someone who had shown the skill set that you could do things that I couldn't do and that were valuable to the brand and would be fun to work on. And you were someone who when I met you was like, oh, wow, this person would be really fun to work with. And so those combinations, right, like doing the work and building the relationships, putting out work that is like interesting and credible and gives you some, you know, something to stand on. And then just reaching out and making the ask and being some of the people actually want to work with. Those are clear, repeatable, substantial steps that get you to success.

And so I just wanted to like tell the specific story because I think it's important for people to hear. Like you're, you know, you did the things and it takes years. It doesn't happen overnight. It takes a lot of effort. But it does work. And so anyway, that's where I kind of wanted to loop that in. And, and, and think, I'm grateful, man. But I got a lot, I was, you know, like I said, you're amazing and everything you've created for us and elsewhere is really cool. The Ascension VR app is really cool and it was really fun to like work on, you know, from my side. So let's talk. I want to talk about VR for a little bit. Let's link on VR before we move on to other stuff and other board again things because I think VR is such an interesting space. Like it sounds really cool. It is every time you have a VR experience for the first time. It is really cool. Even from the, you know, early days, remember playing, you know, some of the cool big VR experiences, even in like the late.

80s that existed. And somehow it never took off. And there have been these waves of like the VR gets kind of popular and people say it's going to be the next thing and then it kind of fades. And then it gets really popular and it kind of be the next thing and then it kind of fades. And so I want to just like, and I found the design challenges of VR, like what it provided that we couldn't do otherwise and what things that constraints it provided to be really fascinating.

So I'll just let you run with this a little bit and then we'll just jump in and I'll talk about the Ascension part specifically. How'd you get into VR? Why VR? What about the industry do you think is interesting? Pick any thread you want. We'll dance around the subject. Yeah. Well, when we started our company, it's really hard to make an indie game and make a living, doing it.

You know, spoiler alert. So, you know, there was this opportunity. There was this VR competition, the Oculus VR jam, and there was a cash prize. And so me and my friends, this is kind of how Templates got spun up. We decided to enter. and we made this VR game. We didn't necessarily have, at the time, a passion for VR. We were just trying to figure out how do we differentiate ourselves as a company?

And maybe this is a route. We didn't know. It was sort of a new thing for us. And like you said, it's been coming in these waves. And this was a wave where there was a lot of funding. There was a lot of excitement. There was lots of hardware technology getting kind of spun up. And that hardware arms race was creating a,

sort of like side cyclone of like financial opportunities where there was VC, there were grants happening. And we were able to take advantage of a few opportunities and that was able to sort of like financially support the company to like get going. And so the VR space was an incredibly interesting space to do design work. There were times where I as a fairly junior at the time, designer, what I was making things that no one else in the world had made design decisions on that were getting sort of like copied into other people's products. And that was happening, I think, for everybody in VR because the design space is so rich. You know, like how do you treat when your player looks up? You have to draw something there. What kind of thing do you draw?

What kind of like how do you take advantage of this new real estate that you normally don't have when you're just looking at a screen and a PC or a phone in front of you, when you have this new real estate above you, below you, that you basically have to do something with, it was this revelry of stumbling across, like, novel design challenges and solutions in this like very fun way that seems to usually only happen in academics, but not in like, you know, real production product making. And then on the flip side of that, it was really challenging because, there was all these unsolved problems and nobody had solutions. And so we're all sort of like blindly grasping in the dark for like what are the decisions that are going to

become the new standards. How is input going to work? And how will that be standardized? It hadn't been standardized. And as far as I know, it still hasn't been standardized. Some really big challenges. And I think that's a part of where it's still facing problems. And my view is you had like Facebook, which was, you know, I think getting some of its market competed with by other companies. And I think there's some pressure on Facebook at the time, Facebook now meta, to pivot or diversify what is its product. And VR was an option.

I think they put a huge amount of resources. They bought Oculus. They put a huge amount of resources into that. And now that AI is kind of an opportunity for Facebook to translate its giant, wealth of user data, you know, I think there's less pressure on them to explore VR as like, what is the new incarnation of Facebook or meta? You know, I think maybe that's shifting into AI in a way that is now putting less pressure on VR to be a thing that happens. So I think there's like these giant market forces, and that's just one example from one company, these giant

market forces that are like affecting, you know, it all trickles down. And, to like are there grant opportunities for tiny companies like ours, you know, probably not so much right now where there were, you know, five, 10 years ago. Yeah. Yeah. And listen, you know, there's that, it's a great. I appreciate that that overview. There's a lot to unpack there. I mean, that reality of like when you're running a small company seeing, you know, you want to make the kinds of games that you're passionate about. And I've always believed that. And you exactly did that. Right. You're making, you know, digital board games is not the default big money opportunity. Right. You're doing because you love it. But you're finding the medium. and the opportunity and the space that technology provides and the financial markets provide to build things that you can build. So you move to VR when you wouldn't have thought to move to VR. And so that's, yeah, it's an interesting space. Obviously we got involved in a, in a crypto-associated game

because of the financial opportunities that are involved in that. And there are interesting design challenges and design opportunities that come from that. And so you kind of build things that you're passionate about in the space that the kind of, you know, larger market provides. When I, so again, that's another sort of universalizable tip as you start thinking about what to do as an indie studio, what where, where do you build? How do you build something you're passionate about that also has, you know, market potential or at least some runway to see if there's market potential. Yeah. And so, so let's talk about the VR design challenges here. Just bring it back to like kind of from the business side to the to the design side. And I'll, I'll kick this off just talking about it from the ascension side, right? So there's a there's a real design principle, I believe in that, you know, the media.

is the message, right? The form factor you are designing for, the user interface that you're designing for defines in many ways what your game is going to be and how good your game can be in that form and how you express it. So, for example, right, Ascension took, obviously took the formula from Dominion where I felt it was cumbersome to have so many different piles of cards and so many different things to do. And the setup was a lot. And I was like, listen, let's streamline that and make it. So I just shuffle one deck and deal it. And I, you know, when we started off, I said, let's, you know, Ascension, you could, you could, you could, set up play complete and reset up a game of Ascension at the same time it takes you to set up a

game of Dominion, which is maybe a little bit farcical, but got the idea across that like, I'm here to make this fast. And one of the other consequences of that was I got to, the game worked really, really well on a phone because it was a lot less information that had to get across. And so the game really thrived on a phone. But there were tons of challenges that came from that. How do you compress? Because it's so little screen in real estate. And how do you change things to be able to make asynchronous play better. And so we had a bunch of design challenges when we moved to the phone that were upside. I could play it.

I was proud of how quick a game of ascension was in the physical world. Oh my goodness. In the digital world, it goes from 30 minutes to two minutes, right? It's like incredible. And so what does that mean? And how does that change the flow and how important it is to make it almost a ritualized behavior? And that was a big deal. But then moving to VR, totally different set of challenges, right?

totally different world where now I have all the space in the world in principle, right? I could put things anywhere around me in 3D space. But there's a presence factor that is possible. That's definitely not possible on a phone. It's closer to what you would try to get in the physical table top experience. But then there's a bunch of challenges to come with that too. I realize very quickly you don't actually want to have stuff like relevant information on the ceiling because looking up for relevant information is terrible. Right. So, you know, there's, you know, and we, with the Ascension VR game,

we ended up having the cards like fly up in front of you and not just, not just mirror a tabletop where I would look down on a table, but they're actually coming up in front of me. So maybe just talk about some of the stuff from your perspective and like some of these, you know, fumbling in the dark lessons learned about what works or what's a challenge if people think about designing for VR versus another platform. Yeah.

Yeah, so working on the VR version of Ascension, there were some really cool opportunities. So one thing that we could take advantage of is the fact that your camera positioning can change in a way that makes more sense if you have like this, you know, it's like a one-to-one first person sort of experience. So you don't really manipulate your camera when you're looking at a normal card game on the phone. But what that gives you is the opportunity to have modes, for example, teaching mode, where you can come and look behind a friend and see what kind of cards they're working with and make some suggestions on how they might want to get their game going. And you've got voice chat in VR so you can have that conversation via voice. And so the opportunities for just things like tutorialization of something like Ascension,

where you can kind of come in and help your friends. get into the game. This is a big challenge we have with typical digital board games. We see a lot of adoption from people who already know how to play the game, but it's harder to get people to pick up something as complicated as a board game when they don't already know how to play it typically because some of those costs, the cost of like learning all of this information that's like, what, you know, a board game, it's like 45 minutes of rules before you even play sometimes. You know, where a typical video game is like one rule, you master it, show mastery, get your reward, learn another rule. And there's this like very nice,

supported gradation of complexity. With board games, there's this big cost up front. And usually that cost is sort of like mellowed out with like you're having some ice cream at the table with your friend. And it's like your best friend and you're in your house or in your favorite room with your cool board game table. So what VR does, it in my, in my opinion, it kind of brings you back to some of those favorite things. You can still have your best friend teaching you how to play this game. You can hear their voice. You can get tips from them in real time. And it creates a much more social and sort of like less sterile environment. I mean, if you're playing on a phone, sometimes people don't even, you know, like there's not a

huge difference in the perception of the experience between playing with an AI opponent versus a person. Because unless you have an external chat app, like you've got Discord open or something like that, you're probably not having a real-time voice conversation. You're probably not having a laugh when something silly happens in the same way and can be very sterile. So the social opportunities of VR for board games for Ascension were big. And we also had, you know, an opportunity to deliver a really immersive experience. I mean, like we have a like the whole background is like based on some of the cards. art and the characters that you inhabit are based on the cards. It's so cool.

I want to just gush about this for a second before we go further because you are literally inside the lifebound world of Ogo. You look around and it's this lush, cool world that you're in. You see the other players are characters from the world. When they talk, you hear their voice from that side of your device and you see them move. And so the virtual sense of presence of being here in this moment is so cool. unlike certainly anything you get on your phone or a normal screen. So it was such a cool execution and such a great.

Like it was the closest, anything I've played has come to the feeling of being in the room. I felt like if I could just pass like some Doritos across to the other person, I would be totally in, you know, to my normal board game experience. It was really, really well executed. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. I mean, so here's to like the next round of VR form factors coming along and financial models making it possible for, developers to explore the space more. Well, yeah, so let's let's let's let's let's let on this a little bit further. Then we'll move it. We'll move on to other things because there's tons of stuff. And again, you are, you know, you, you, you were, I was going to say jack of all trades.

We're really a master of many trades. So there's a lot of topics I want to cover. But like from VR evolving to what I see is potentially the next wave, which seems to be where the money and the tech is going is, which is AR, right? Like, I think there's a real interesting space for air game design. As people now have like, you know, kind of heads up display glasses, which are still very rudimentary, but I've used the, I actually had Tim Cook demo me, the Apple one, which was surreal. But I've done the, you know, which is just, you know, you're basically wearing ski goggles on your head, but it was like very immersive and very interactive to the meta ones and, you know, Google's got new ones coming out soon. Like that

ability to have not just a immersive world that takes me away from the current world, but a one that like projects it as part of the current world. Like I could definitely see that being pretty amazing if like you and I are sitting across a table and like, hey, let's play a game of chess. and the chest board appears in front of us and we're moving pieces around. Something like that feels pretty powerful. How do you think about AR versus VR where you see that tech going?

Yeah, I mean, I think there's a lot of interesting space to explore. With VR, like, I remember there was a, I used to have a harder time with flying. And I remember working on some VR games with the like mindset that this modal experience, when you put the VR headset on your face, you really don't see the world around you. And that could be a feature because maybe you don't want to see it.

Like maybe you're dealing with something unpleasant like a flight and you don't like playing. But then I think on the other side, when AR gives you that pass-through experience where you get to see the world around you, I think, you know, that might make people feel more comfortable and sort of like less vulnerable. Like you've got kind of a blindfold on. in VR. And yeah, I think similarly, it's going to be a really rich space to explore probably lots of new design that the people working in AR, I imagine, are having a big kick with.

I haven't done too much. I did a tango game. I did a, technically I was an artist in residence for the SF MoMA and I did a tango app for them back the day, but one little AR app, but not an expert. Technically, you were an artist in residence for MoMA. Hold on. I do a side quest into this story. How did you become an artist in residence at MoMA in San Francisco? And what was that like? Oh, it was so cool. So there was some kind of initiative where they just asked a bunch of developers to make AR apps that featured art in the MoMA. And so I make one. That's so cool. And so you just, I guess maybe this is then the other piece about your personality, then to be willing and just like, hey, I'm just going to be the one to do this and jump in.

Like, that's a lot of people would be scared to do that. You know, they don't see themselves. Is that an artist that belongs in MoMA or like what, you know, what gives you this the confidence to this? And also, I mean, it's a massive commitment to jump and do these things. You know, you competed in a competition trying to win prizes for to keep your company running to jump into this, which was certainly far from guarantee. what is it, what do you think it is about you?

Where do you get that confidence to jump in or, you know, how would you advise someone else out there to even find these kinds of opportunities and let alone to have the courage to jump in and decide to go for it? Well, I definitely think the opportunities kind of come in these like waves. And I haven't seen some of these in a while. So if you're not jumping in, don't worry. I don't think you're missing out. I think there's just moments where there's a lot of probably funding,

funding trickling through that's getting to them. You know, I don't know the back end of what was going on at the mama, but I imagine it was all part of something. But, you know, I think, you know, anyone who's going to be an artist is going to be taking risky risks with expressing themselves. And, you know, part of that is joining contests. Part of that is just expressing, just drawing something. I mean, if you expose what's inside of you to the outside world, to eyeballs outside of you, they could reject it. You could lose the contest. You could not get chosen for X, Y, Z opportunity. And I think, you know, just leaning into accepting rejection and failure and, like, building up a tolerance for that rejection and failure, I think, is a really important thing that maybe doesn't get focused on in school in certain ways.

I think school focuses a lot on winning and getting the A. And, you know, maybe I shouldn't say, but I got an F one time. And I think it's like, I think it was one of the most valuable experiences to fail something that I cared about. What did you get an F in if you don't mind my asking? I know you know. Post-structuralist theory at Berkeley. Okay. Thanks.

Thanks, Sam Mahmood. Yeah. Well, listen, you know, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, value of getting used to failure of being able to kind of handle it emotionally, being able to channel it and lessons learned productively. I'll share, because you were vulnerable with that. I was in, when I was in college and I was going to a ridiculous, it was, it was, the class was referred to as rocks for jocks. You know, it was like, whatever, the one of the early, like, low number science classes, because I had to get a science credit. And I, I remember walking across the, the quad at Dartmouth and I had a, like, I was like having a panic attack going to a test because I had to memorize a bunch of stuff and I just didn't feel like I was ready for it. I was having a panic attack about this stupid thing that mattered not at all, but it really felt like it to me. And I caught myself in that moment and I was like what is happening. First of it took me a little minute to realize what was happening. It's like, am I having a heart attack? Why can't I do that? And then recognizing how much pressure I had been putting on myself and how much like I had this sort of self identity built around always succeeding and always getting a's and always being that role and how much. How much. that was hurting me. It took me many more years to actually fully unpack all of that, but that recognition and slowly getting used to failure, realizing that you as a human being are not impacted by any success or failure of the projects that you do. If there's any lesson

that people listening to this take from this podcast, please take this one and then re-listen to it because it took me many, many years to learn. And it's probably the biggest tool to unlock like your creative potential is just being able to divorce ego from outcomes. And so I appreciate you sharing that story and helping to drive that home. I'm glad we took this a little detour because I really do think it's just absolutely critical, especially in your role as an indie developer and mine as well. So let's jump to another fun topic. This one, in general, we may get to the contentious parts, but I want to talk about AI.

And I want to start by not talking about the contentious parts at all, right? because I think a lot of people are concerned about generative AI in the most recent wave over the last couple of years. But I specifically want to talk about the AI that you built for Shards of Infinity. You built the Shards of Infinity app. You've also done it for a bunch of other games. I got completely addicted to race for the galaxy execution. Your AI, I said this to you before we started recording. And there's absolute truth, I can verify it with my play.

I play the Shards Infinity app more than I play. any other app on my device, full stop, not close. And that is in large part because your execution of it is so good, and the AI is so good that it gives me a challenge, right? Like I win more than I lose, but not by very much.

And so it creates a really fun, really cool experience. And I have, you know, the Ascension app is not like that. You know, I beat the Ascension app every time I care to do so. The other apps I played, most games are not,

they don't have that balance in a way that you guys have landed it. What, you know, one, first of all, just kudos. And anybody out there that wants to like have a real, you know, you can play, I recommend you start an easy mode if you don't know how to play Shards or you're getting new because it's not easy at all on the hard mode. Why were you guys so successful at this? I think you've given talks on this.

I've looked at some in the past. And then, you know, maybe we could, we can jump to what the world looks like now as the machines are smarter than we are now or to whatever degree. this. So take that wherever you want to go. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Okay. So I mean, big, big credit to Caldon Jones, our AI engineer who has done something new in the world. You know, there's a reason that our board game app AIs play different from everybody else's. And I think we are the first company to have neural network driven AI opponents in production, like in mobile apps, not in an academic situation or a, you know, academic contest,

but like, you know, in a real game on min-spec phones, which takes, you know, not only some really ingenious engineering decisions that Kelton has come up with, but, you know, also a lot of optimizations that him and Jeff Gates are, our programmer and my co-founder have really hammered on, you know, I talked about hammering on QA and just playing the game a zillion times, you know, sometimes these optimizations just to get the AI to be performant on min-spec machines so that you don't have to be on the most fancy, expensive device to be able to play these amazing games that we really just want to have everybody play.

So the thing that's kind of special about this AI technology is normally, you know, a board game app is going to have an AI that's using a series of logic gates to say, okay, it's a script in this situation, make A or B choice. You know, okay, next thing, make A or B choice given, you know, this next situation. And that scripted process has a lot of limitations to it. But the neural network style of AI opponent is basically, You know, I will say the word learning, but that's a maybe misleading term. But basically, the AI is developing a sense for what choices lead to a win. And over time, it develops a more fine and finer mathematical sense of the choice within a simulated sort of tree of choices it could

make to choose the more optimal decisions that are going to lead to the win for the AI. Yeah. Yeah. And so in many ways, this kind of like neural net and reinforcement learning of what gets me to victory and what subset of choices are likely to do that is, I mean, is the way that a lot of the modern, you know, the modern AIs have been trained. I mean, obviously a lot more data, a lot more processing power to get us there. but it's like it's this really interesting revolution, which I particularly interesting to see that you were well ahead of the curve on this.

And you are using your powers for good. So thank you for that. How do you see how do you see the world developing now? And I don't know, you know, I don't know if you have thoughts on this. I know it could be contentious, but that, you know, both AI in terms of, look, most studios I know, I mean, their programmers are using this. A lot of different people are, I mean, I certainly use it in a lot of ideation. and I know it's not as good as a game designer as I am, but man, it's really useful as a brainstorming partner.

Man, it's useful for other tools. And it feels like there's a lot that's changing. Have you experienced that? Are you played with that at all? Do you see you have predictions in that space? Well, we don't use generative AI at Temple Gates. We, you know, I feel like there's a lot of great area right now with copyright law, but we want to be on the right side of that.

And basically our company philosophy is to always prioritize trust. And we're given this gigantic windfall of trust when we have a player even come to one of our games because they probably fell in love with it at their kitchen table with their best friend or their family with their favorite snack. And they come to us with this degree of trust that we didn't really earn. So my view is all we have to do is not drop the ball. I think right now with generative AI, there is a lot of trickiness around this covenant between the artist community, the creator community, and their copyright to what they have published into the world with an expectation on how they will be able to control that.

material. And I think right now that trust is in a really shaky place. So we are not using generative AI. But I know it's a weird thing to say because we were like the first people to be using neural network AI in our board game apps. So I think, you know, it's a complicated. Yeah. I don't think this is an easy question. And I bring it up, you know, listen, I've had AI experts on the podcast. I have talked about this. We have, you know, and I don't, think it's easy and I don't want anyone to pretend like there's there is an easy answer or have to be put on the spot but I do think it's something we have to talk about because I don't think, you know, to an extent the genie's out of the bottle and there are degrees of which nobody has

contentions around using the stuff, right? If I can use it and have it, you know, serve as a valuable therapist or doctor or legal advisor that can save me, you know, either lots of money and time or even potentially give me access to something I would not have access to. If I'm in a third world country, it don't have access to a great doctor and it can serve that role. I think very few people would object to that there, even though it's maybe taking jobs away from hypothetical doctors or, you know, using material that was taught that way. So I think there's some degrees which, some areas where it's getting more contentious. Also, most of the programmers I talk to are actually super excited to have their master of their jobs automated, which is kind of interesting. Some are not.

Some are not. Definitely some. But, but I find it's a, yeah, it's a very domain specific set of challenges. But I specifically like, you know, for leaving that aside, like just staying in the range of like having an AI, a better AI opponent in my board game apps is a good thing, right? Like I want that very desperately. And so you're the only ones that have executed it well from my perspective. And I think, you know, more of that, you know, more intelligence are used in the right way. Seems like, seems like net positive for the space. So I don't know if you guys feel like your stuff is, you're able to use this any better or does, Are you making, for example, I'm not sure that the Shards AI getting smarter is a good, which helps the game at all. Like, I don't know if I want, I don't know if I wanted to be better than me all the time. Oh, my gosh. Yeah. I think you're right.

We get the patch notes. Sometimes we'll say improved AI. And like, I remember seeing somebody who's comment on Steam as like, what do they mean improved AI? We don't need improved AI. Yeah. Yeah, there are limits. There are limits for sure.

Yeah. Well, yeah, and so this is just a linger on this a little bit longer just because I think it's an interesting design question, right? Like, you know, design and development wise, like I want one of my goals when I'm making games is I want people to feel like they're winning all the time, but there's also these like opportunities for growth console, right? So you want that steady curve of learning. You want that steady curve of discovery. And so this like, you know, to me, the Shards app is in this, it's just golden zone where I win more than I lose, but I lose often enough that it's still a real challenge. And I think you would, ideally you'd want an AI that would adapt appropriately to the player over that timeline where there's constantly like, yep, you're still winning, but you're still like, I, how do you think, like in your dream sense, like, how would you think this is optimized? I mean, I don't know.

It makes me think of that one Star Trek episode where everybody got addicted to that one game. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. I would be a little nervous. I get a little bit nervous with some of the hyper optimizations that are, you know, like so, so honed in on, like, dopamine circuitry and pleasure circuitry. Like, I definitely think there is a danger zone where you could, you know, you could maybe go too far in delivering people such a perfectly balanced, you know, thing. I don't know. I think that I think like, I don't know, what's happening is like what I feel like innocent little games. We're just trying to give people some fun in their life. You know, with the tools available now and the data available now, I feel like there is a lot more ethical like questions, not to keep like bringing it back to this, but like the questions, the design around like, I feel like there's more ethical design. like, necessary in an app where you could, you know, maybe super optimise that. And I think, you know, do we want to just print money?

No. Like, you know, if we wanted to print money, we wouldn't be in games. You know, we want to do something positive for the world. So, I don't know. It's tricky. Yeah. Yeah. No, I mean, it's definitely what, you know, why, why we do what we do?

we want to build communities and connect people and provide joy. And like, you know, there's a, there's an interesting fine line between when is it, am I using the, am I using my powers for good or am I using my powers for evil, right? Like I building in addictive play loops and building in things that like help people stay engaged and keep you at that like nice challenge zone where it's like you're right at the edge of your ability. That gets you into flow states. That gets you into these, you know, idealized, huge parts of human experience. Like, these are not negative things. But if I'm using them to just like take money out of your wallet or keep you addicted

so you're not like taking care of your kid or whatever, obviously there's a problem there. And so this makes you think of like the infinite jests by David Foster Wallace or this, you know, they make in that case, it's like a movie that's like so good that once you see it, all you want to do is watch this movie and it's a real problem. So I think that there's a, yeah, I, my general metric is like, would I want to be like the player of this game? do I come away from this as a player that I would not, you know, and, and, you know, maybe he's not the best example to bring up when we're talking about ethics and controversy. But Elon Musk had this thing of about talking about unregretted minutes, right? Like how many, it's not, we're not trying to optimize for engagement.

We're trying to optimize for unregregated time. Like, where you're like, I actually enjoyed that. I'm happy I did that. And I come away on the other side, like feeling better about myself. I think it's a decent metric. And it's fuzzy all around, right? But I do think as the tools get more powerful across the board, not just with games, we have a bigger responsibility and obligation to check with ourselves and say,

hey, is this something where I would feel good about this on the other side where people are coming out of this thing, my life is better because of it, right? Yeah. So, let's, you know, while we're on controversial and topics of ethics, you've got, you know, and you clearly care a lot about this stuff. you've chosen a business model that is very much, I think, very customer-friendly and very challenging to thrive as a business. You don't have any subscriptions, you don't have any micropayments or other than some expansion purchasing, right? You don't have in-app gems or

free-to-play games at all. You just have buy the thing, have it forever. And I know this from, you know, even just the way we do with Shards and with the Ascension app, where, you know, we have people who play, you know, like hundreds and hundreds of hours every month. And they still like maxed out paying us $20. And that's it. They'll never pay us another dollar until we come up with the new expansion. And then it's, you know, $2 more or whatever. Like that's it.

And so we don't optimize for their spend, but it makes it, you know, if that game were a free to play game experience, we, I probably wouldn't have to do anything else other than work on that. Same has got to be true for some of the stuff that you've done. Let's talk about that tension and tradeoff. And, you know, again, a lot of, a lot of developers out there, you know, don't understand how hard it is to make those choices. And, and maybe you can speak to why you chose the way you did and how you think about it going forward. Yeah.

Gosh, I mean, it is, it is an uphill battle not putting gems in our games. At this point, it's, you know, I think that the, the trick with gems is they really obfuscate to the player how much they're expensive. And I think there's a risk there where someone can be taken advantage of or, you know, anyway, I think there's just a lot of ways to manipulate your users when you obfuscate how much money they're spending. And so one way to avoid that is being very transparent about the cost of things, which is what Temple Gates does. We are very explicit about like this is if you're using dollars in this region, we say how many dollars you're spending. on this expansion and you buy the expansion and now you have that expansion. The trick is we are making cross-platform games.

And the reason that we're making cross-platform games is because we, you know, our role, you know, in our relationship with the publisher and the designer and our player base is we want to help distribute the game to as many players as possible to have, you know, lots of offerings, including a big, beefy multiplayer pool so that it doesn't take you too long to find a suitable opponent who's going to be a real challenge for you or be just the right challenge that you're looking for. So that means we want players across all kinds of platforms. But the problem is all these platforms are in competition with each other. And they have zero, well, an oversimplification is they have zero incentive to harmonize.

the feature sets that they support under the hood, the APIs, SDKs that we're like plugging into to deliver our products, they have zero incentive to harmonize those across the different platforms because they're all competitors. So the way that Steam operates is pretty different from the way that Apple operates is pretty different from the way that Google Android operates. But we are delivering a product where, our goal is to create the illusion that this is basically the same product across these three different platforms.

And it is increasingly challenging when there's updates to the platforms that are coming in hot and constant. And we're constantly like, oh my gosh, you know, a new, this doesn't support this notification protocol anymore. Or, you know, the way that bundles work on Steam, you know, bundles on Steam support this great feature, which I wish they all did, which is called Complete the Set. So if you're buying on Steam, and let's just say you're playing one of our games that offers a bundle because there's lots of expansions. If you buy on Steam, if you've already bought like maybe one expansion and then you realize I want the bundle, Steam will let you complete a set so you get prorated and the amount that you pay as a customer, you don't have to double buy that first expansion. But there's no other platform that offers that.

And so if we were to just manage that ourselves and have gems, we could sort of like make it the same across all platforms. This is a long-winded way to say it is really difficult to not put gems in. But, you know, it's part of our philosophy that we want to keep things really above board. But for anyone who is putting gems and for anyone who's doing this, like, I kind of get it. Every so often we have the conversation of like, we just got to do it. there's no way we're going to figure out how to continue our model. Like even just from a technical point of view,

let alone money. Yeah. It's hard. And so this idea of like gems and in-app purchases and this freemium game experience, it's got this like negative like valence around it and there's this unethical mind. But I'm glad that I'm glad to surface you wrestling with this, you know, kind of in public, right?

Because it should be obvious to anyone listening. And I've known this for a long time. You are an incredibly ethical person. And you care a lot about the work you do. You care a lot about the people in the community. And so they can see, like, actually, it's really, really hard. And there's a lot of pulls for a developer that not only as from an economic viability standpoint, but from a product viability standpoint, from an actually being able to give customers what they want standpoint,

like there is a lot of upsides to the stuff. So I think it's a, you know, just seeing that the challenges of the tradeoffs and how as a, you know, as a designer, as a, you know, publisher, as a kind of, you know, person who's trying to link all the technical. bits and pieces together, how you think about this, I think is super valuable, regardless of what the answer is, you know, at the end of the day. And one of my goals is, you know, we're going to make a lot of choices. And I like to experiment with a lot of different mediums and platforms, right? We went, Ascension started as just a paid download app. Eventually, it became a free to download app. Once we had enough expansions to make that a justifiable model, obviously we had Soulforge Fusion as a,

more of a, you know, a free to play with in-app purchases and currencies and all the things that you're afraid of, and even going further to make it a, you know, some cryptocurrencies played with that, trying all different types of models and including digital printed physical goods that are one of a kind and different, you know, I mean, one, you know, many people complained about the TCG model with randomized acts and rarity as a abusive model, which to some degrees it absolutely is, but to other degrees, it allows for player experiences and communities and support that wouldn't exist otherwise. So there's a, that one of the things I like to do, and maybe this, you know, this ties back into what we've talked about from the beginning, the value of being a generalist

not a specialist. It's like understanding the implications of the business side, the production side, the interface design side, and the customer side and the game side, all together make, that's how these decisions get made. They have ramifications across the board. And unless you're a journalist to some degree, or you listen to a podcast like this, or you get to hear from journalists, you don't get to know how to make those decisions. Well, you, you know, if you just take a myopic view of one piece of the puzzle, you won't make the best decision. So I think it's really interesting and you've wrestled with this for a long time. So thank you for sharing that.

Yeah. All right. Let's get, we've done plenty of fun, plenty of fun, contentious topics. Let's get to stuff that's less contentious here. Let's get to more about kind of the bread and butter of what, the work that you do, right? Because we know, you know, it's a lot of different aspects. I think the most interesting thing for me, need a start and dive in on, but I'm happy to jump in other areas, is kind of like UIUX when

it comes to building these games well, right? It is so important, especially with, you know, you've chosen to build board games in a digital form. So the rules of the game already exists to some degree, right? So there's a maybe some small tweaks that happen when you move into board game into the digital firm. But like, when you think about what makes a great UIUX or the principles that you've learned or this interesting tradeoffs or changes that you've made to games, what comes to mind? Because I think this is an area that people don't put enough thought into,

and I think the same is true for physical games. Physical games also have UIUX as critical. But let's talk about your expertise area and what you've learned and maybe a couple principles who could take away here. Yeah. So from my point of view, board game apps are almost entirely UI. Sometimes people like UI has like a weird rep in the industry in the video game industry of like just doing UI. And it's like, well, don't do board game apps.

That's all you do. And I think that's, you know, basically because a board game is in itself an interface to a system. So the board game app, of course, is also going to be like a user interface to a system. It's fairly abstract relative to a lot of other kinds of video games. A lot of times there's tokens and units and, you know, little pieces and cards, these very modular components that basically do a dance of like a spatial dance of like, okay, this piece is in this zone and it has this property.

Maybe this zone is the market. And now it moves from the market to my deck or my hand. And this zone has a property where I can play it from this place. or it gets shuffle here. So there's just this like sort of dance of components that's happening in front of you. And, you know, I am the UI designer at Temple Gates. And so it's my job to sort of make sure that that dance is executed, clear to the player, legible on phones, which are very small sometimes, and difficult to read a

a whole board game and making a lot of the difficult decisions on what information is going to get visually communicated or auditorly communicated in such a way that we maximize all the information the player would want to have available to them while making a strategic decision and minimize any other noise because board games are so complicated. So that's basically the job. Maximize all the information people want to have when making a decision and minimize the noise, I think it's a great phrase for this, right? Because like, and let me know how this resonance to the art.

To me, like, I think there's like a good user interface, generally speaking, wants like to do like three primary things, right? It wants to, you know, to make it so that it's clear to me what is available for me to do, that the interface highlights the things I'm most likely to do and hides the things that are less likely to be useful. So it doesn't overwhelm me with information. And it makes me want to interact with it. Like it's pleasant. Right. And so is that, does that, does that resonate with you in terms of kind of like how you think about your goals? Or is there something I missed in that? Yeah. And that kind of like details into something where I think sometimes when people will hear

digital board game designer, they're like, well, what's the design? Like the board game has already got a designer. If, you know, the game has a lot of design. But there are, things that like for example our board game apps often have like a primary okay button and that doesn't really exist when you're playing the physical version of ascension or the physical version of shards of infinity there isn't an okay button and it's something that the board game app has and that okay button often has thousands of functionalities sort of like plugged into it that it kind of calls up the one that's relevant to this moment and it simplifies it. It's just okay, but really okay might be in charts of infinity. Use your focus ability in this moment because

it's the end of your turn. So we as designers are saying, what does the player probably want to be doing? Let's make it a big shiny button. It's the most glowy thing on the screen. This is going to advance the game. And it's probably what they want without taking away the fun of the strategic decision from them. I think there's a little bit of a balance of like, well, you don't, if there's a real decision to be made, you want them to make it. But if it's sort of a throwaway decision,

you know, we can for the sake of speeding the game along, make some of those things and present them almost as like one piece when it's really many, many. Yeah, yeah. And there's a lot to unpack here because I want to get we'll get specific with Shards Infinity because obviously

it's the one I know the most and we worked together. on a lot of the stuff. So it's a, you know, that button, that's the primary OK button. It shifts dynamically throughout the turn from the like, play the cards in my hand. It's one of the most things I do to exhaust and use the champions that I have in play, which be the next thing that I would want to do to use my focus power to, okay, you know, go attack my opponent with a bunch of stuff with whatever damage I have, which is at the end of the turn. And in addition, if I go and I hit that button too many times, but there's other things I could have done that I might not have noticed, then it will pop up.

a hey are you sure equivalent right and this is something i learned from doing ascension the first time where hey and which things i choose to do and are you sure about is important too because there's plenty of like possible things you could do but like the you know the opponents champions are hidden in in the screen right that they have to you have to click an icon to see what champions they have and killing your opponent's champions is pretty important decision that people are likely to miss and so if i go to end my turn to deal my damage to your opponent has champions are you sure you want to end your turn or would you like to take a look at those champions? And if I say no, I don't want to end my turn, it automatically pops open the tray to show you the champions, right?

And so those are big, those are really impactful decisions to the flow and the experience of the game that are not like, you know, they're not obvious or trivial at all. It's just like some specific things that I think really do matter. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. We wanted to make it so that if you're a new player and you haven't played Chards of Infinity before and you didn't want to play the two, and you didn't want to read the rules and your friend didn't teach you, you could still sort of muddle through by hitting, you know, you might not win and you might not have a great strategy, but you could kind of get to know the game through, like maybe over relying on the okay button, and then give yourself, you know, as you're ready, an opportunity to explore some of strategic choices you could be making instead of just spamming that okay button. And I, you know, I think

I would love more of our games to be as like I think in charts of infinity it was really successful probably the most successful in this kind of design and I would love more of our games to have that. You can't always work with me on these things so you know I know. I know. I find this stuff fascinating. It's so critical. And the same is true when I'm making a physical game and I'm designing the UIUX for it. I want obviously I don't have the same set of tools available but I have

others where I make the icons that I need to draw your eye to really important and bigger in certain areas. I put all the information that's relevant when I'm trying to interact with a card in the center row in a certain place and all the information that's relevant when I'm trying to interact with a card that I'm playing in a different place. And I try to like make the things where I can draw your eye and help you get to certain areas or I'll choose. And these were some interesting choices I've made different experiments on when I'll choose a game that will like in Ascension, all the cards are kind of forwards and backwards looking. If I play a Unite card later in the turn,

it can still trigger earlier in the turn. But in Shards of Infinity, it doesn't work that way. You have to do it when you play it, which can lead to different implications in terms of how I structure my turn order. And so there's like, that's sort of a game design and UI

combination of how much this stuff matters and how I need to clearly get that information across to you in that moment. And I find it just like there's so many little pieces that I think when I make, a game, I'll even talk about this one because I'm working on a new game called Grass Fed, which we have up on, we're collecting followers now on GameFound. They haven't launched it yet, but it's a regenerative farming themed deck building game. And we had a prototype of it that came

out. We did a playtest in a physical prototype. And it was like the text on the cards was just too long. It wasn't like easy to access. And we re-scrapped the whole thing and made almost all the text into icon language. Like, easy to read, like feels more beautiful, feels more like the, what I would expect from an open regenerative farming experience. I don't want a block of text, which I might be fine with in a, you know, fifth expansion to a core game like Ascension and there's a lot of text on a card or Magic's 30th expansion has more text than ever before, whatever it is, right? But, but, but, but it's not what I want when I want a game to feel like this open, beautiful farming experience,

actually having like pretty icons and less text, which takes a little bit more from the user to understand what the icons are, but once you do, the experience is way more joyful. Is there something, you know, we talk about that kind of either it feeling like the theme or that creating that experience of joy, are there choices that come to mind for you that you've made in games, or that you think about when you think about building a UI, you know, for a games that you've worked on or any of the projects that come to mind for you.

Yeah, absolutely. like one sort of hill that I will die on is I would like every icon in any of the board game maps that we work on to have like a tap tip. So anytime you see an icon and whether that's a currency icon of like how much this card costs or a victory point icon or even just like an icon that indicates which expansion the game is from. I am trying to put and it's a so much work. But I feel like, again, I think like what, you know, what it gets you to is like fostering that trust and that like trust with your player that like it's, they can, you know, they can bite off a little bit more symbols and icons and they might, they might be otherwise

comfortable with knowing that they can get that helper dynamically. And that's something we can offer digitally, where we can just pop that up, depending on if the player has, like, mouseed over or clicked on the icon. But we're really in the role of, like, extending the designer like you, your vision and, you know, the graphic artists that you're working on and the illustrators that you're working with. So, like, you know, we're not necessarily making those same choices about, like, how much text versus iconography is going on a card.

you know, we're mostly just running with the choices that you've made. Well, yeah, but I'm going to push back on that a little bit because I think there are other things, right? Like the, for example, the, you know, whatever, even just like Shards of Infinity, the interface that you guys designed feels very sci-fi and tech. When I use my power to attack you, like a laser comes across the screen, right? So there's like, there are choices like, yes, we set a kind of more sci-fi feel for the game, but then you had to make a lot of independent choices that make that feel appropriate. Whereas in the Ascension world, when you built the VR for Ascension, you chose a more lush fantasy environment.

There's plenty of environments in Ascension you could have chosen. Macana is a more of a steampunky type of world or the void is a dark and different. Maybe you just chose it because that's your favorite. But I think that it does, there are a lot of these aesthetic choices that you have to make when you're building a game that really do impact the feel of the game and impacts how a player wants to interact with it, not just in terms of utility of information, but also bringing that world to life even for a board game, because in a digital board game, you've got more tools than a physical game does.

You know, it's true. And I did study psychology, and I did study color theory. And so, like, there is a, it isn't a random choice that we chose the Lesh Green background. It's a choice that's slightly informed by my bachelor's of psychology and, you know, probably being exposed to some kind of study where, you know, there's a positive experience in certain color environments, you know. Is there any little concrete tips from that that you could give? I think that's really interesting. Like, how does color impact psychology in a way that maybe people would, should maybe wouldn't know or, you know? Yeah. Yeah.

I mean, the preference for color is not absolutely. symmetrical. You know, there are preferences for certain colors, which there are theories that, you know, might be evolved to, you know, have us prefer a verdant and a fruitful environment or a safe environment. And so, you know, you can, you can, and something that Temple Gates does is we, we read white papers. We, we read research and we do, you know, we're not scientists. We're game developers. But we, we, we we certainly are interested, like, in what, you know, psychologists and what scientists are, you know, coming up with. And it's, it's interesting to us to try to, like, apply some of, you know, what we, what we read as lay people. And so, you know, you can do that, too. There's all kinds of research

papers out there. And part of a book club where we, we read a research paper and discuss it over breakfast. You can do that too and then experiment. Yeah. So I mean, I want to let me push you for some specifics because I know my audience likes us and I do too. Is there either a particular psychological insight or paper recently that impacted you and some design decision impacted or is there one that you would recommend to our audience that was there? And I'll give you some time to think about it because you know, to me, I'm also fascinated about the stuff and I've had, you know, both some, I've had academics on this podcast as well as as designers and creatives because I think the cross-pollination

there is is really interesting. And I've worked with the Wharton School of Business on, you know, building better systems for creativity and team building for, you know, for companies. And we've, we've run workshops for Fortune 500 companies where I've applied game design principles to that. So I studied a lot of like, okay, what makes teams work well together? What, in fact, does make people more creative or less creative and how do teams work that foster creativity? And, Spoiler alert, most teams actually make themselves less creative by working together. And so I found that stuff super fascinating and then applied it into my business. And I'm continuing to work on ways I can take how we use game design theory to make games that are fun, engaging, have clear goals, give you the right kind of mindset and how we can use that to make our lives and businesses better.

So I'm 100% on board with this. And I think we should always be learning. But in terms of I don't default to studying the psychological impacts of UI. and these other areas. So maybe just where would you point me in the right direction or some insight that you've taken to heart? There's a book called Photon's to Phenomenology by Stephen Palmer that is just, it was a textbook for a neuroscience class. But it, I don't know, it has all kinds of interesting ways to help understand, like,

when you are seeing something with your eyes and what the light is doing. and the psychological impacts of that. So that would definitely be top of my list to check out. All right. A little holiday reading for me. I love that. And yeah, I appreciate it. Listen,

I think that one of the, you know, what triggered me, I should have thought to have you on the podcast a long time ago, because we've known each other for a long time and I've had respect for the work you do for a long time. But you did this post on Facebook that was about trying to describe your job, right? And all of the things that you do, right?

Okay, I've got to design features. I've got to design the UI. I've got to do the editing and XML editing for things and get the art done and code and do marketing and PR and show up to events like the one you showed up to meet me and do help with customer support and with the community and be the person that, you know, manages the team and fundraisers. Like there are so many roles that's very hard to get across. So I thought maybe we had an hour together. We could at least unpack some of that. And we got to, I don't know, 20% of it maybe. I'm not even sure.

So it's it's just, you know, again, I love to highlight this sort of stuff because it's, So, one, I don't think people see how much goes on behind the scenes and how important all of these roles are. Two, I just like to highlight amazing people and you are that. And so it's been great. I'm really glad that you took the time to work on this and to work on games with me because I love everything that we've built together. And I really hope we get opportunities to build more cool stuff. Oh, yeah. Sign me up. So for anyone that wants to see the cool things that are out there, obviously, I'm going to personally recommend the essential.

mentioned VR app and the Shards of Infinity app. I will also say I've played pretty close. The amount of race for the galaxy is probably got to be up there, at least for sure, my top 10 things and other games of Templegate. Where should they go? How do they find more cool stuff that you think? Templegatesgames.com.

We got all our games there. Or you could, that's probably it. Templegatesgames.com. Fantastic. Okay, Teresa, thank you so much for taking the time. It is lovely to get to chat with you, as always. Yeah, thank you. Thank you so much for listening. I hope you enjoyed today's podcast. If you want to support the podcast,

please rate, comment, and share on your favorite podcast platform, such as iTunes, Stitcher, or whatever device you're listening on. Listener reviews and shares make a huge difference and help us grow this community and will allow me to bring more amazing guests and insights to you. I've taken the insights from these interviews, along with my 20 years of experience in the game industry and compressed it all into a book with the same title as this podcast. Think like a game designer. In it, I give step-by-step instructions on how to Apply the lessons from these great designers and bring your own games to life. If you think you might be interested, you can check out the book at think like a game designer.com

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