Think Like A Game Designer - Vlaada Chvátil — Designing for Joy, Building Great Games, and Letting Quality Do the Marketing (#97)

Episode Date: December 18, 2025

About VlaadaVlaada Chvátil is one of the most influential game designers of the modern era. As the creative force behind classics like Through the Ages, Codenames, and Galaxy Trucker, and a co-founder of Czech Games Edition (CGE), he’s built a career defined by curiosity, craft, and an uncompromising commitment to making games he actually wants to play. Vlaada’s path—from programming and digital game development to shaping some of the most enduring tabletop designs of the last 20 years—has given him a rare perspective on iteration, collaboration, and long-term creative sustainability. In this episode, we explore how he chooses projects, why great development beats marketing every time, and how designing for joy has fueled both his games and his company.Ah-Ha MomentsWe Sell Games So We Can Make Games: Vlaada reframes the entire business of game design. The purpose of publishing is to fund the next act of creation, not to chase sales targets. This mindset frees designers to make bolder, more honest games, because success is measured by creative momentum, not quarterly performance.The Best Marketing Is Ruthless Investment in Development: CGE spent its early years with no marketing team at all, because they didn’t need one. Vlaada’s long-term strategy is simple and difficult: invest heavily in development and let quality do the work. Great games create their own momentum. Word of mouth, sustained sales growth, and long tails are the natural result of excellence.The Golden Rule of Collaborative Design: When collaborators disagree, Vlaada avoids persuasion entirely. Instead of fighting to prove one idea right and the other wrong, the goal is to find a third solution neither person originally proposed, but that both genuinely like. This reframes disagreement as a creative engine, not a conflict, and almost always leads to stronger, more resilient designs. 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 Vladok Zvado. He is one of the most accomplished designers that I know I have been trying to get him on the podcast since day one. And I'm so excited to finally get to share his story, his insights, and all of the deep dive design chats with him. He is a video and board game designer, most known for some very famous board games such as through the ages, code names, galaxy truckers, and way more than I can name here. You can go to his board game geek page to see all of the many, many games he's worked on, Mage Knight and countless others.

He's built the Czech Games company along with friends of his into a real major name in the industry. we talk about the process that he uses for selecting games. We talk about the importance of openness and honesty and how he creates games more for him than he does for anybody else. That he sells games so that he can make games. He doesn't make games so that he can sell games. We talk about the process of making physical games versus digital games, how to convert physical games into digital games,

the unique advantages of each side of it. We talk about the process of creating rules and how you can create rules that work for your players and how those things improve. we go very deep into the weeds here so if this is you're a designer you want to learn more about how to make games that are mass market friendly that are euro games how they cross over to each other what how you develop your taste and how you can use a team and coordinate a team around building a wide variety of games volata has those insights for you you know we first got a chance to chat

uh gen con this year and i really enjoyed that conversation uh i knew you guys were going to enjoy listening to this one so without any further ado here is Vlada Chavadl. Hello and welcome. I am here with Vlada Tchavatl. I've done my best with that name, but Vlada, it's great to have you here, man. Hi, everyone. Thanks for important to write to me. Yeah, dude, listen, so you've, you know, you've been kind enough to carve out some time here. You have been basically my white whale guest. I have wanted you on the

podcast for a long time. We finally got a chance to meet in person at Jen Con had a great conversation there. I'm very excited to continue that and share everything with the audience. So I want to start, I usually start with the origin stories here. And I think that

yours is, you know, you've told this on other podcasts and things. So I want to make sure we get to, you know, sort of new and interesting deep dives here. But the biggest thing that has always impressed me about you and your career is that you have done such a wide breadth of games, both in the pure digital space, in the casual game space, in the deep strategy space, and then games that kind of cross over those boundaries. And I would love to just sort of start with the process by which, and then, you know, also really kind of running a company and growing a company and being part of that process. So I'd love to start with just a kind of assessment of either how you pick project. or kind of how you create, you know, kind of ideate to be able to come up with these different projects.

Because I think of anybody I know of in the space, you've done the best job of creating such a massive variety of categories of home run games. I believe it's just really like passion for games as such, yeah. So I was studying programming, IT, but not because I love programming, but because I realized that computers are. great platform for games yeah and before i was uh i was always doing some uh like board games for my friends but even before i was doing summer camps for kids lots of games there like running through forest and fighting with anything and it was suitable for fighting and so on it was always about picking rules that provide some good challenge and interesting situations whether it was computer games, video games, or this forest battles.

I was doing also some like life of action role playing games. Yeah, just games in all forms always fascinated me, and I always have great time playing them and making them. And so your development background and your engineering background, that's how you go through. I'd love to just get growing up. So you prototype digitally first with a lot of your games and you use that skill that way. Is that like, you know, walk me through, pick any of your kind of game processes.

How do you start that process and what your early prototyping and iterating process look like? You know, usually the game stays in months or even years in my head, yeah? Because I have some idea, but idea is not enough for a game, usually, not only. always, it was different with code names, but for some meteor and thematic games, I need to have good idea how the game will be played. Like, imagining what the players will feel, what will be the core mechanics, what should be the fun, and how it interacts with the team. and I don't start working on a game before I have a very good idea about all these things. But in my head, it might look good, but then I start to write stuff down in some Excel sheet or Google sheet or something like this.

Then it might not survive this face because what looks good when you imagine it, you can imagine there will be some cards that do this, and then you have to write down example of these cards. and you may learn that it's not as great as you imagine it. But if it works, then I start to create a digital prototype. Because even if I would want to create a physical prototype, I would start with some software that because most of my games are about cards, that creates the cards, layout the cards,

because I think the last game where I did, my cards manually was 20, 30s ago. Since then, I'm really like, if I want, if I really want to create a game, I know this is an investment. And when I start with software that creates the cards, then it will pay off, yeah, very soon. Yeah.

So you have, in this case, what I'm hearing you say is that for a lot of these card games you're making, you're not, you're using digital tools to create the cards, but you're still working on physical cards to do the actual playtesting. Is that, is that right? You know, data for my cards are always in some Excel sheet. Yeah. Yes. And there is a program, and I can hit a button and say export. And then usually, because when I, when you have cards, it's not so difficult to create this digital prototype. Then I have this digital prototype. And it's very convenient and fast it's yeah if you change few numbers you need to either stick something over the card physical or or print a new and scissors them again and that's uh that's

something that i don't need to do i know there are now today there are tools for this for this yeah there are tools for creating decks that's right and there's tabletop simulator or table to and so on, but it was not the case when I started this 30 years ago. Yeah. So I created my own tools and I was using them like till one year ago I was using them. Now I'm using tool that we developed in CGE, yeah, because I was doing this myself and my wife did the multiplier solution and some friends. But now we have several people in our

company like full-time dedicating their time to creating digital tools for developing games and play testing games. Yeah. Okay. So that's really interesting me because I think the process here, it matters a ton and the fact that you've now reached a scale where you

know, so we have gone through this process as well where we developed our own tools. We had our own prototyping tools. We had a universal game builder tool. And then over time, we went the other way and now we use external tools that are available and things like Figma and InDesign and others that help us build our cards and then export them to Tabletop Simulator.

So we found we went the other direction where we originally homerolled our own tools over the last 15 years or so, and then we moved into using the publicly available tools, have just gotten better and better. But you've now spent more investment building internal tools to work with your team. What features or what advantages do you think your internal tools have? Like, what do you think are the kind of key features that you've built that make it so much more efficient for you or that make that system work better for you? It's better integration, yeah. For me, it's important.

The process is as smooth as possible, yeah. When I feel something is blocking me or hindering me or, yeah, what I don't never want to do to not do a thing in a game because I'm too lazy to do it. That's right. So it has to be convenient, yeah? If it is, so what's best is if I need something be done differently, then I either write the programmers, hey, I need this, or I do it myself. Yeah. Because I'm a programmer.

But also, I believe the tablet of simulator and so on don't have this strength. We have like perfect, you know, our CGE recent games like SETI or Arnac, very heavily playtested on our site. Yeah. And it was collecting data to balance the game. Yeah. We have like this loyal group of testers. Some are really great and or are very devoted.

That's awesome. And it helps a lot. Yeah. And it's, we also want this to be convenient for them. Yeah. So to be very honest, when I was looking at, I don't know, I don't know how is it with Tabletopoeia or Tabletop Simulator now. But when I was considering to use it, I said,

I realized quickly, okay, these processes are not optimized for my work, yeah? Right. And for pie testing, yeah, for massive play testing, like hundreds or thousands of games played. And you are, yeah, you can't, I don't want to talk about something I don't know exactly now, where it is now, but it doesn't offer what our systems offer. And as I said, if we want our system to offer something more, then we just do it.

And yeah, no, that makes perfect sense. And it underlines, I think what's the really important part of the principle of design is like everything that you can do to reduce the friction in your iteration and testing and learning process is a massive win, right? Because the faster you can go through that, the less that gets in your way, the less things that get in the way of you're making changes, the better. And so you've got the resources and engineering skills both with yourself and your team that you can home roll that and that makes it easier for you and that makes a ton of sense as well as it sounds like yeah massive data collection which makes that process so much easier which is definitely a challenge you know we have to do

that stuff manually with people submitting their results through a google form or and then those things get put into a spreadsheet and then we're able to look at that spreadsheet and see both the qualitative and quantitative feedback which is important too we also at the end of the game but it's part of the system so it's against like seamless we ask people for opinions about the particular play of the game or about game generally yeah so it's not about numbers it's about feelings about how players enjoyed it what they were thinking yeah we can we can perfectly see which cards are overpowered or or too weak but it's also important about how the players feel feel about it, yeah? So ideally, it should like align, yeah? Yeah, that's right.

You know, not, the goal is not to like balance everything so that every card is equal, but to create it so that, you know, the playing cards feels good and there's no sort of one dominant strategy that things collapse into, and so you lose that choice and discovery, right? So when you're building this out, so you said, and I just want to make sure I heard this right, you said you'd spend

months or years potentially from an idea phase, where you're just playtesting in your head before you even get to this spreadsheet building prototyping. Did I hear that right? I am not playing it in my head. I am just imagining the game. Because when I create the first prototype,

which is not automated, of course, it's like I can move anything to suitable places like put the raw card from a deck or discard a card or move it to places where I designated to go and move some figures somewhere also. Yeah? So when I have this prototype, then I play this game myself over and over. Yeah? I run it in this like a sandbox mode that means that I do, I evaluate everything manually and but there's some automation. For example, there's some end turn button and it automatically

switch me to the next player. Yeah, I can play for two or three players, depending or for one depending on which type of game it is and as i said playing it over and over dozens of times it may end here if i stop liking the game about like 20 or 30 games then there's no point to try to of course i can improve it but if the core mechanics are not that enjoyable then I can stop the game. It happened to me a few times. Okay. And then, so that that makes sense. So it's, you know, ideating in your head, thinking about something cool,

finding it, getting to the point where you've got enough of a clear picture, then it's adding it to a spreadsheet and writing down and starting to create cards. And maybe once you started to create the cards, you realize it's dead there. So it could have died in your brain. It could have died in the spreadsheet. It could die on your sandbox solo testing after a dozen or a couple dozen games. Then once it gets past that point, then you put it into a, a more less sandboxy environment

and explore it to more people? It's up the next stage? I'll just correct one thing. It doesn't die. It returns back to the previous stages. Usually it returns to that and it has chance to connect with some other ideas

in a year or 10 years. It's more of a video game death than a real death. It's a respawn and start the level over. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, then so when I am happy with it, it's, these phases are kind of like blended together. It's not like this phase ends, this face starts, yeah. But when I think I have something that I like, then I create the physical prototype, which is now easy because I already have everything in digital prototype, yeah.

So now I just say how many cards on sheet and how they are really, how is they are real size. It's prepared. Oh, but there's lots of like details that has to be handled. differently on table. Yeah. But I usually wanted a game on the screen look very similarly, yeah, not choosing different means, but some stuff like, I don't know, scales or counters, tracks, yeah, are easier to do as a number on computer, easier to use.

I wanted to say when it is, when it is ready, I create this physical prototype and then places with people. and it's usually, I don't remember if I ever had a game that I thought it is fun and it was not fun for the players. That's okay, it's rather wise, but I have some games that people thought that they are fun, I thought not that good. What happens is this moment was the highest risk is the playtime in downtime. Because when playing myself, I know the game

and I make it running quickly and then I put it on table and now I see people thinking and not knowing what to do and drugs and yeah so it's one thing and then it's all to me to decide

I say okay they will play faster usually I know you need to streamline stuff not just by components iconography but also by where the decisions are made and how broad is the

space players are exploring and so on and what leads them amount of information they have or should have and so on or just reducing the length of the game by saying okay so it will be not not five rounds but only four rounds and so on yeah but usually is what's what's work the best better is the three mining the processes yeah sometimes it may happen it may happen okay it will be only four rounds because the fifth round is already too big, yeah? It is not needed, yeah? It kind of

culminates in the round four, so let's keep only four rounds. But I remember exactly the numbers I have for one of my game, dungeon pets. When I was playtesting it on my computer, I started with

11 rounds, and it was fun, but I said, okay, because I had already I said on table, it will be slower. And when I created prototype, I put it only to eight round. And in the end, then I, after practicing people, I reduced to six rounds. And the final game is five rounds with four players and six with three or two. Yeah.

So it went really down by more than half. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. No, when in doubt, cutting things out. and shortening things to make it a tighter experience makes a lot of sense. One thing I wanted to pause on for a second

because you kind of threw this out there as sort of a given, like, hey, once I think a game is fun, other people are going to think it's fun too. Like, you know, your taste and your instincts for games are honed well enough that, you know, you're not going to miss at that stage. For a lot of people that doesn't come naturally, is it just from playing so many games and loving games

and working on games for as long as you have? are there types of instincts or the ways that you've trained your instincts for what players are going to like do you just assume the players are going to be like you do you put your head in there into different personas like how do you make how have you trained your taste and your aesthetic

so that when you think a game is fun you know you're pretty much you're pretty sure you're going to hit after that I'm not sure it will be a hit I just know it's very like to appeal to people that have similar mindset as me, but I don't want

to say I don't care, but it's like still the best way, yeah? I'm lucky, there's enough people around the world that have similar taste. Yeah. And it may change. I think that the global taste is changing

and I believe my games will be less successful massively now, but it's okay for me. The point is, if this would not work, I was doing this as a hobby, yeah? And it somehow happened that enough people liked it, say, okay, so I can publish the game. But if it would be not working, if I create a game the way I like it, and people, or not enough people like it, likes it, it was not my goal to be a game designer.

So I would not change the way, I would be not looking for ways how to do things differently, and to just not be a game designer. That's it. I love that. I love that. You know, I do it the way I like it, and people around me, I play a regular little bit like it. Yeah, that's it.

Yeah, I love it. And with these people, with several of these people, we created a company. We created a company based on we understood each other on games and had similar tastes. I believe it is still,

even now when the company is much bigger, it's still there. Yeah, because we attract people with a similar taste. Now, when we are working on a game, then almost everyone is really enjoying it. Yeah, and so... Okay, and so, like, everything you're saying is principles I agree with, right? Like, you know, designing for yourself and designing something that you're really passionate about, surrounding yourself with people that are similar, you know,

hoping that you could find an audience that's, you know, like you enough to justify it, but that's not... Like, if you chase an audience, you're not going to hit. And I found this in my own experience. When I've tried to do that, my games have failed. When I've made games for me, they've done way better. But I want to push back because your games are so different. Like, it's such a, how, like when I think about, and I love all your games too.

So clearly, I'm part of this audience, right? I mean, I, from code names to galaxy truckers to through the ages, is there like a through line for those games, which are all so radically different in, in the length of play and the audience capacity, right? like that how do you is there are there principles that you've defined or like things that make it so that the category of player you're talking about can like enjoy all of those games or that the people that you know it's just such a wide variety uh you know when i have a party game that i've worked on and i have several i don't publish it under stone blade because i generally think that the audience for stone blade games is more interested in strategy games and kind of that sort of thing so i don't publish games that are party games in that space and when i've tried to in the past they've done not as well um you know we did a game called you got to be kitten which had some success but it's just not the same audience exactly so how is there something that like defines what the ethos is of of you and your team or your player base or is it just just good games generally like is there anything that i'm not seeing that's like this is why this is how you draw a

line between these many disparate projects it's really about uh the categories are not so strict Yeah. It's not that Serious gamers don't want to have fun or Euro gamers don't want team or American players don't like mechanics and so on. Yeah. It's just about focus. Yeah. You can create party game for gamers, yeah, that part game for gamers and you can add fun to Euro games and so on. So it's really defined by our taste is as a company. Now we have enough people, so we have a good sample. Like last year we created very light game with food in a company. And we didn't plan to. We actually were thinking that there will be no new game for us and because we have enough

work with other projects, with other projects, with expansions and the one. But then we had playtesting event, our internal playtesting event at the start of the year. And there was this little game that everyone was enjoying. And there was voices in our company. Hey, this is not the type of game C.G is doing. Do you see how these people are after playtesting lots of Arnac or expansion, second expansion, big box, yeah, and set the expansion? So how they are enjoying this lighter game,

how they are like because we had one prototype there and we had right on the event to create another because it was too much demand for the game yeah so i said why not yeah it's it's a nice good game and our people are enjoying it why would not our customer enjoy it yeah and we already of course we already started like more lines of games with code names yeah but even code names was not created as a mass game. Yeah. I was on a gaming event and there was where people, they're playing lots of euros, mostly euros from Essen, because it was right after Essen. But they were also playing some party stuff and lighter stuff and so on. And I tried this simple idea with code names and it worked. But at that time, I knew, okay, it works nicely. I can think about it more,

how to improve it and so on. At that time, I had no idea how broad will be the audience for code names. I just saw it works for my gaming buddies, yeah. That's how the games were created, and I'll tell you one thing. When you ask how we decide what we do, we ask our people. We ask our people, when he has some possible prototypes and so on, we ask them which game you would enjoy most work on. And sometimes it might be even not the best commercial success, But what's important is if people want to work on the game, the process will be fun. At least for me, the process is maybe the goal. We are selling the game so we can create them.

We are not creating them to sell them. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So we really take this and put everyone in our company, and it doesn't matter if you are head of production or developing or just like send it replacement packages. Yeah, everyone in our company can have a word in what we, will be what we will be publishing. Of course it's also important to know if people are really willing to playtest such a game, yeah? So our internal questionnaire about this is like, do you

think we should publish this game, would you like to work on the game, how often you think you will playtest physical prototype, how much you would be playtest, digital prototype, and so So on. Yeah, it's our decision process. It's not about, okay, there's target audience for this and demand for this and so on. And it's end up, usually it's end up pretty well. Yeah. Because I believe this passion is then like felt from the project.

Yeah, I love that. I mean, I think that, you know, my rule of thumb if in a game, if I'm ready to kind of like, you know, go forward with it and publish it is like my playtesters are. are actively playing the game even when I'm not asking them to, right? They're like choosing to play this game and they want to play more, even when I'm not, you know, we're not

quote-unquote working. And so this is taking that to another level in a certain sense where you're using your internal teams decisions about which ones they want to play test and keep working on. And not only does that mean it's more likely to be a good game in the long run

because it's got a good seed to it, but it's also going to be more likely to be a good game because they're going to run through more iterations. They're going to be more motivated to test it and improve it. So that makes a lot of sense. Just to get a little bit more granular on this, because I love getting into the weeds, you said you have kind of an annual or there was an annual playtest event,

and then you're asking them these questions. Is that a thing you do like once a year or once a quarter? Is there like a formal survey process where you ask them to rank each game and how often they playtest it or is it just kind of a casual? Like what's the actual process? It was like this earlier, but now it was a bit more granular with it generally. We had this essential, and from SM to ESN, we created some games, yeah? This cycle was simple.

But now we can create a game for Gencon or for SM. We can even create some stuff for other parts of the year, yeah, especially the expansions or the new versions of games and so on, games like codenames doesn't need this big event because it's mostly about when the big chains decide what they will be next year on shelves and so on. For example, we had one event before SM. The main goal of this event is to teach our promoters how to promote the game, the games we have in SN, but also we play some prototypes and so on. We had this questionnaire right after this event because there were some interesting prototypes, interesting projects, things we are considering to do for a long time.

So people had chance to play them again. So we just run this questionnaire again, yeah, even if it is, if there will be another in January. Yeah. Of course, we also talk with people, but we are now big enough company. So some people are more allowed. and some are more silent, and we won't like everyone to have chance to give their opinion. Yeah, no, that's very important. There are a lot of loud opinion gamers out there, and many people who, yeah, if you give them a chance to write things down

or separate them, you actually get to hear what they have to say. So that is a good lesson. So I can stay on this topic forever, but I want to cover some other things. And because you brought up this idea of promotion, and, you know, the most people I talk to, you know, the consensus is, right, it's easier than ever to make games now. The tools are better. The, you know, access to good, you know, printers and capacity and everything is better.

But it's harder than ever to get people to pay attention to your games. It's harder than ever to sort of get, you know, promote your games and get it out there. Now, you obviously have a big platform. People are excited about whatever game you're going to do next. But in addition to, you know, having a team and doing promotional events at Essen or GenCon or big events like that, what do you find to be the most effective tools to kind of get the word out about your games or how do you think about new game discovery and teaching and eventually we'll get into rules creation stuff too because I think you guys

are very ahead of the curve on that also and when terms of promoting and getting the game out there, what do you think is the most effective tools that you have in your toolbox nowadays? It's still, I still believe the most effective efficient way is to make the game actually great

because the time proves it we had games that those sales were increasing over years like from year to year for 10 years more or more they were growing yeah that's very good long term strategy yeah so

but I say strategy because that means we invest a lot into development. Of course we have also some marketing and we want the people know about our games but our position we started without marketing we start several years we had no

employee who's like a job description would be marketing yeah right it was just okay we need to write some texts and we were talking about the games like very openly and it works even now we are trying to be like honest

and close to players yeah even if we are much bigger of course you can be like close to people who buy your games at some big malls yeah yeah that's That's a different, yeah, but still the thing that I love on shows and that's a reason why I don't want to miss any lesson, and sometimes go to Gen Con.

You know, the point is, if people like our games, that mean it means that they have similar taste, and that means that if they will be living next to us, that we will probably visit the same game club and having fun together, you know, I feel this connection with those people. of the way we are picking games and doing games, yeah? So this is for me, this is where I stopped with marketing, yeah? I mean, at this point, yeah? Yeah. That's what matters to me. But of course, we have now people that do great job, like promoting our games and doing this stuff, but I'm very glad we have them because I don't need to do it myself now,

and I can concentrate on games. So the only thing that I, what I still believe, in is this like openness and honesty that means also not just communicate this way but also do the games what I love is people that understand what we are doing and why we are

doing it. When I see people like having some question and someone answers and even gives the reason why it is this way and he's right and he writes exactly why we did this then it's always like

nice feeling for me. Are you talking about when it comes to like mechanical or thematic choices with the games or somebody's explaining a rule or a policy there? Or like what do you mean like openness and honesty? Like, could you flesh that out a little bit more? Sorry? What was the question? So you're saying the scenario you're talking about is someone you're watching two people play a game that you've made and one of them asks the question and the other ones explaining what, why a game is the way it is and the principle behind it or something. And that's the, that's the moment that you're talking about, like why you make the games the way you do and like what the rules.

I meant mostly like board game geek or so, yeah. Because, you know, I was before in the video game industry. Back then, at that time, there was also, I was also reading some discussions about video games.

Then I was reading discussions about board games and somehow fell in love with the audience of board games. Yes, yes. The board game audience is far more you know, I don't know, it's a much much more a close-knit community. And I think that's one of the things that really stuck with me about your previous answer. It's like, you know, I got into card games and board games and, you know, I played magic professionally for a while, but it wasn't the money or even really, like, the love of the game is what connected me to the people, right? The friendships that I made over 30 years ago now are still friends that I have today that I still communicate with. And like, those bonds are like what really makes this community great. And I think board games, that's part of the reason why board games, even in a very digital

World Board games are more popular than ever. I think that I want to use that, so I have two different angles I want to go. I want to talk about rules and how you guys write rules, but I also, since we're talking about the digital versus physical divide, you know, we're one of

very few companies that does digital and physical games. Both, you guys are incredible at this. And I think you're, when you're taking one of your core games and building it in a digital format, as well as a physical format, the process, I want to dig into a little bit of the process.

And I'll specifically use, I think Galaxy Truckers is the first time it really struck home for me, right? Because Galaxy Truckers, it's a frantic physical building game where you build your ship, and then there's some strategies that you're associated with it, but then you hope for the best and watch your ship get blown apart as you go through the, as you go through the run. And then you turn that into a digital app, which, you know, having the physicality of that work and feel good, that's hard enough on its own. But then you also built an incredible campaign mode with lots of different play modes

and different strategies and different restrictions and like and a funny little stories and characters like it's a whole other game that you built on top of that feels like it was it marries perfectly with a another wise really innovative tabletop game that's very physical

what how just talk like that's such an incredible process like what what what was that like were you involved in that entire process did you design that series how did it how did it come to fruition that that was the plan like i want to i want to hear i want to hear all about this this is this is a remarkable very rare ability i don't know too many other people that can do this so first the reason why to do is this yeah i like digital board games

yeah sometimes because i of course need to play with people for the social social aspects and like this physical feeling or the board game but i probably want to play more than I have opportunity to. So that's why I like digital board games. But sometimes it happens to me, okay, so there's a new digital implementation, buy it, and play. Okay, I know this game from Dabler,

so I can set up the highest AI difficulty. Okay, okay, I won. And what now? Okay, so I won. And the game was great, and what next? So I can play again and win. again why there are no

achievement at least achievements or something like this I even created my own achievements for games that I liked they didn't have any so just

okay we're tracking myself in my head okay I have not done yet this in this game and so at least achievements are mandatory I think but it's still not enough I believe so

video games know how to do this how to entertain you for a long time how to reward you so we always wanted to have something added to the game because when you are playing on on digital device you lose this contact with people so we need something else to be just not inferior product now and in galaxy tracker i enjoyed it a lot because we already had this funny universe yeah i actually created a scripted language for this campaign because i'm programmer and video game developer by my origin.

And this was like our first digital stuff we did in CGE. So I created this mile cell. The program was written in Excel, together with dialogues. Yeah, there was a system of dialogues and crypt together. It was really a good translator by translating directly these Excel sheets. So Jason, our English rulewriter and text variety. and text writer is a programmer by education too. Maybe physicists, but he can program.

I don't know. So when he was rewriting the rules, he had exact context because he could read the script in which conditions this dialogue. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So it was fun, yeah. So it was a very simple campaign, but it's mostly about this funny characters, Sweden.

And it's about these modifications of game, which is another thing that is allowed to do. and digitally you can tweak a rule. But that's what we did with through the ages. And through the ages, it would be difficult to have like story where I've always developed some civilization and we develop another.

It could be done somehow, but with some gods or so. So instead of this story company, we created lots of challenges. It was also great fun. I was, because when I was writing the core of the game, already had in mind that there will be these modifications so it was then very easy to do it was mostly about play testing what feels interesting and so on and we did the same for the for the

galaxy trucker but we developed in the campaign galaxy darkers games are shorter and we also developed completely new mode for the galaxy trackrell turn-based to allow asynchronous playing because it's a way how many people play board games online is synchronous, because it's difficult to find enough people who have enough time to play a game, especially a real-time game like a Galaxy tracker. And the work we put to this returned also because the latest expansion to Galaxy Tracker, which is named the Do What, is about which big part of its missions we develop for. the app and then playtested it was we already published this it is the first edition of GalaxyTrucker and now we improved it and if we

even edit this turn-based mode to the expansion for people just to try and it's actually actually interesting but it's it loses something on Galaxy Tucker of course but for some people it loses something they don't they don't like on Galaxy Tracker

yeah yeah yeah no it's a it's a fascinating shift and then I'll do and again I highly recommend and people check out these games, and it's a wonderful illustration of how the design opportunities and constraints of each mode of physical and digital can really feed each other. And I've had to do this with Ascension and solve our fusion, a bunch of games. So, like, I've learned a lot from that. I have one question on the other game because I played, I think it was still the beta,

so I don't know if you've changed it, but it felt like it was a conscious choice. With the code names app, you've built it such that I can take a turn, and there's daily missions, and there's some asynchronous play. But it does, it sort of cuts me off after a while, right? Like, I can only play so much in a day unless I've really got an actual live opponent at that time. And then it just kind of stops me from playing. Then I have to kind of come back the next day to get more missions or more goals. At least when I was playing originally, that way it was like that.

Is that still the case today? And if that's a conscious choice, I'd love to know why you would cut that off. Why you are asking about daily changes, why they are limited? Well, and even for challenging, yeah, so, yeah, there's limits to the daily challenges, there's limits to the number of players, because, you know, you could easily make virtual opponents or virtual turns available as much as you wanted in that game at this point, right? You know, we decided that we don't want to play code names with AI. That was a decision that we challenged several times. We started this or designing this like 10 years ago, almost not done, but, yeah. a long time, maybe nine or eight, I don't know, a long time ago.

It was before boom of LLM. Even, and then we several times like challenge this and we're considering this, but we feel it has more value to play with people, code names, especially. You can play through the edges with computers because they compute, the playing through the edges is about what you do, and you can react to some environment, whether the environment are other players or AI opponents, it's not that important. But in code names, it's really about, like, connecting minds.

Like, even if it is, like, mind of an unknown person, we still felt this, like, higher value. Yeah. So everything you do in code names is based on what people do. Even if you are playing these daily challenges, these challenges is something from other players created either right now or long before. and we liked it. Our algorithms think that people like it, based on how well they do,

a possibility to write a daily case by Smiley's. We store the best and offer them again to more players to entertain them, yeah? So that's it. And also the player base, we have some very loyal players. We have some very loyal players that are with us for in Czech for three years, already, because

a Czech version was released three years ago, yeah, still playing. And I believe if we say, hey, play how long you want, whatever you want with the daily cases, they would be, yeah, you should not play

until you are fed until you say, I don't enjoy it anymore, yeah, then you don't return. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And the main goal is to have people to play the games with others. Some are really crazy. There were players that

they were playing 100 of code names games simultaneously. I was really double checking our SQL query. I got it right. And then I was checking okay. And are the

area playing? Yeah. They were very thing. It was like, okay, there is some player that has 120 games. He is able to, yeah, only 17 of them is waiting for their turn

and the longest waiting time is like two hours, yeah. So it was really surprising for me. I had most something like 20 something and it says, they said, okay, I should tone down. I should do also something

else. Yeah, so it's this simultaneous playing. Yeah, yeah. Synchronous playing. Yeah. And this is I believe, core of the game. and the daily challenges are just because sometimes when you finish all you or games you are on turn we have one very it's something that people don't maybe realize there's one very important feature of on code names which took a lot of effort to do on code names up if you want to start another game this always your turn so when you start a game you start a game where

it is your turn to guess or to give a clue. Yeah. So if you want to play, you can always play. You can always create a new game and play. But then it could get out of control. Yeah. So that's we at the start, in lower levels, we have some like security, say you should first play, especially when you are on turn in another game.

Please play our games first. And then there are these daily. daily cases where you can like entertain yourself without starting a new game and this uh what i loved was the spy master situation yeah where you return naturally not just to play more but to see how it ended because it's necessity because uh the daily daily situations are where you create a clue and this clue is then given to many players as a daily case and you compete with other Spy Master, who had similar or same setup

who does the best clue. And that was my favorite way to play. Yeah, and I've realized I didn't actually describe codenames. I assume most listeners will be familiar with it, but the gist of the game, if

there's a series of words on the board, one person's the Spymaster, and they give the clues to who is to where certain spies are hidden under those numbers that you're trying to get, there's the opponent's ones that you're trying to avoid as well as an assassin that is the real bomb

if you hit that one you lose immediately and so giving clever clues that let people pick is the heart of the game highly recommend it for everybody and I think that this, he's seen this apart and why I was so excited about this is taking something

that's at its core a very social group dynamic game and turning it into a digital game presents all these different challenges and the ways that you've solve them are always very clever. And again, very different kinds of things that are available in a, through the age of digital app, where it's, you know, as you mentioned, purely kind of my own strategy and how do I deal with the situation in front of me, or a galaxy truckers where the physicality of the game and the quickness of the game is not necessarily a strength

in digital, but can be turned into a bunch of different things or used as a unit of design elsewhere. Like each one of these is its own fascinating design project. And again, you know, it was one of the reasons I was so excited to talk to you because I just haven't seen anybody else execute that transition as well as you have on so many different arenas. So just really happy to dig through that. So thanks for walking through those choices. Yeah. On the other hand, when I want to just entertain myself and play something quickly, I usually do Shards of Eternity. Or it is among the few games that I, if I have just a few minutes, because of the reward the game is good and rewarding itself and it works even without this

and i played also also ascension and so on but kind of now ended up with this simple but a tiny thing believe me if i had if i had you know we worked with a partner on charge and affinity and they did an amazing job on executing it but if i had if i had the bandwidth, I would 100% add in all the campaign modes and all the different aspects to it, because I think that game would love, would support that super well. In fact, we have that in our new physical version of the game, the Saga edition,

which has all that stuff built in, but maybe someday, but I appreciate the compliment. So, uh, the last thing I promised I would get into, uh, is about rules and writing rules and how you communicate the rules of your game. Um, having read through several of your rule books, um, especially really fun ones like

Galaxy Truckers, uh, and you know, you do a great job of like, giving the rules, but also being very entertaining. Things are broken out clearly into sections. It's clear that you put a lot of thought into these things. Writing rules is very, very hard. A little bit easier on digital games where you kind of can force people to do what they do, but still game tutorials are not easy.

What goes into that for you? How much time do you spend on it? I'd love to maybe piece out some lessons people could use for their games because I think this is an area where a lot of games fall down and don't do a good job of getting people across the finish line to experience the game itself. So writing crows is very hectic and painful process, because this is the last thing we do on the game.

Yeah, the game is already almost in printer, sometimes physically in printer and we are still right. It's because that we are tweaking stuff and so on, and also we are learning how to explain the game all the time. We are presenting it on events, to playtesters. Sometimes we, of course, we need some rules before for online pay testing, but the real rule book is written as the last thing. Especially now the processes are maybe a bit different,

but especially for my games, I really reflect everything I learned about explaining the rules in the rule book, yeah? And I have also, we are writing the rules originally in English. We started to write in Czech when we're doing first game. But then it is double translating. Then you need to translate English and then you need to translate from English. So it's better to start directly in English.

And we had great Rulighter, Jason, who is American who lived several years in Czech. So he knows Czech. We cooperate with him since very beginning. begin so and he's also very systematic and you know I can create a joke that sounds

funny in Czech and he can translate it to US and it's not just language it's about also cultural stuff one thing I I wrote some joke about heroes never being four

because in Czech we have lots of examples where it's usually three or five heroes yeah And not that true for I even wrote that Alexander Dima was so ashamed that he has four musketeers, he names it only three musketeers

but Justin say, okay, we have lots of four, fantastic four, so we wrote a different joke in the same spot so it's yeah, yeah, it's about it's a great cooperation here also

And another thing that helps a lot is having the digital prototype because lots of rules have unclear areas. Lots of rulebooks have unclear how this works, how this combines together. We know exactly how it combines together because he has to program it. And programming is very systematic. So then when you explain the rules, you cannot say, okay, let's handle all this combination in programming, yeah? in the program, yeah?

You need to define things, yeah? Okay, so this type of effect is on your turn, yeah? And if it's on your turn, it means this, it means any time it means this and so on, and you write clear evaluation of the game, and then you can translate this to a book,

by choosing the right structure, right terminology, and so on. So it helps a lot to have the rules, like clear? having a very clear logical structure and something that a machine forces you to do and then what I'll do is I'll create kind of bullet points and flow chart rules

before writing human rules even if I'm not making a digital version of the game. And then when it comes to the order and how you present that information, you made a comment earlier about like, you know, you're constantly teaching and demoing the games and that informs the process as well because you're demoing the games even before

you've written the rulebook or do you revise the rolebook based on those demos? Like, how does that fit into your process? Especially for my games, when I am explaining it myself, especially at the start before we put lots of people on it, then I have to explain it over and over. And I am a guy that gets bored doing stuff over and over the same stuff.

So I'm improving it, and that's also why some of my games have like various jokes in the book because I invented them during explaining the game because I want to entertain the players entertain myself so I'm adding this funny stuff like thematic background stuff

and so on and this is reflected in the final book too yeah and it's sometimes there's like I see reactions of players and some and how they comment on it and so on I can improve based on it

Even in dungeon pets, there is a rule that was invented by a player, just as a reaction, yeah, because it's about growing some pets. There's shop with little pets, and you can buy them and grow them. And if a pet, if no one buys a pet, it leaves the game. And I was always saying this pet goes to a farm and is this living here happily. and one player said, okay, and then next turn, there is one more meat on the market.

I said, yeah. And next time, in a book, it's written, there is some very unrelated rule. Whenever this happen, then there is meat on the market. And in advanced rules, there is written

even advanced rules for advanced players that says that if one of the creatures actually a plant. If plant goes to farm, there is vegetable in market. If a golem goes to farm, there is a goat in the market, and if goes to farm, there is nothing extra in market. And I know it's stupid extra rule that is not necessarily for the game, but it makes the stuff memorable. So that's my approach to rules, yeah? It's not like reasonable, but it's fun.

Yeah, well, it fits into the broader sort of narrative, I feel like I've got here, which is like, you know, you kind of view your role as being able to create this like entertaining experience, right? To be able to like, you know, entertain the audience. And that's true from, you know, there's no hard and fast rule about what the game needs to be or it's got to be this level of elegant or that this is spawn and this is what is, you know, going to be entertaining people on how you write the rules and how you write the rules and how you present it with different forms of humor and what types of mechanics you're going to put into a game. All that stuff feels like it has to just serve that goal.

Is that an accurate representation? I was listening to miss the question. Like in terms of entertain, like in terms of, you know, is there a North Star that makes you these decisions, right? It sounds like from, I've heard you use the word, it's entertaining, it's amusing, it's fun. And that that guides through this whole process when it comes to both which games you select, what, like how you present the rules, when you're turning something into a digital game. Like, you know, I've been trying to, because you are so unique, I think of all the designers that I talk to and the diversity of the stuff that you do,

I've been hunting for through lines. I've been hunting for like what connects all of these different things. And this concept of being entertaining and amusing and even just making yourself laugh. But also you've been keeping a very close eye on your audience, right? You're watching them respond to the demos. You're listening to their feedback. You're watching as you go through the different aspects of this. You're watching the metrics a lot when you're seeing these people playing it online.

So I feel like there's a through line here. Maybe I'm off, but I've noticed you use that phrasing of, you know, it's amusing, it's entertaining, it's fun. And even if it's not, you know, classically the right thing to do. elegant as it could be that you might make that choice. Yeah, I still think that all this comes from, you know, me wanting to have fun. Yeah. And people around me and creating fun for people around me.

I was doing games long before I started to publish them. And it was always about, like, entertaining people around me and about finding a ways how to do it and finding the ways how to do it also which I enjoy. And people around me changed. I was like a heavy gamer at the start. I have a gamers around me.

Then I now I have family. I believe cold names would not be created because if people around me is my family, I create games for them. And still, yeah, but still attending our game club and gaming events. So it shifts. I was doing the video games and I play video games.

So I want to, I know what I enjoy on them. And another thing is that I don't play the same game over and over. Many players pick their favorite game and they try to achieve master in it or something like this. What I enjoy most is the first play of a game usually. Yeah, like I enjoy and enjoy exploring the game and it's biggest adventure. So there are many games I played only once and enjoyed, yeah, not saying I will never play this again, just wanting to play something else then. This is same also for design. When I am designing something, like next time I don't want to do the same thing better.

Different thing because we're worrying to the same thing over and over for me. So that's why my games are different. But the only the only thing that really connects them is, yeah, there are. are few some rules of myself, but what really connects them is that I had fun creating them. That's it. Yeah. Is there another, I'll give you two different routes here. Either you mentioned some rules for yourself.

If you want to share any of those rules, I'd love to hear them. Or is there another category of game? I'll pause there. Are there any of those rules that you could articulate or that you want to articulate in terms of what makes you select a project or not? Yeah, there's some taste. We share it in our company, for example, we don't do or limit this, like, diplomatic aspects of our games and take that mechanics and so on. It was not like this always.

I played lots of diplomatic games like big strategy games were full of backstabbing and agreements and so on. I lost a lot of friendships over a game of diplomacy. Of course, diplomacy too. But, you know, which was okay. We played with friends and we are still friends. But the point was that at some moment I said I had enough of them because the meta game around these games is basically same or very similar for all these games, yeah?

Yeah, who lines the best. This one is this guy is going to win. We should stop him. How we do it. yeah we should stop him but not me because i want to win myself and so on yeah and i don't care i i won't i will be second and this is this is the same same regardless of the mechanics and it's it works better if you don't understand it yeah i i was playing with i i realized we were playing a game that was like meant to be great and uh it was clearly based that

uh there was like powerful means how to stop players from winning and it was clearly based on the fact that someone, though is so clever, that no one else notizes he's going to win until it's too late. But we noticed. We are clear a word. So we could sit down and say, okay, now, okay, now I can decide whether you win or you win. Or we'll be playing next round and I will lose any chance. And when it goes to this, it's kind of boring, because all these little miniatures or mechanics

or little micromanaging of your stuff is insignificant to this big meta game. So this is something that I said, okay, I have enough of these and stop to play basically these games. Also, I don't play too much

two-player games and don't create because it feels to me the better I play and the more I like professional war game person, the more I feel like uncomfortable beating someone

in a two-player game. Oh, you're so nice. That's what I figured out. You're just a really nice guy. That's your ethos. No, it's really like, you know, it's a problem of winning. If you have gaming friends,

do you really like those that have always been the most? I mean, winning a game is the quality that proves something about your abilities that can be useful in your real life and so on. But in the gaming, it's not adding that much fun to others. And especially in two-player games, there is just you and your opponent. It feels uncomfortable.

I think I have some friends that really love games. They are not that great. But love them, buy them, play them, explain them. and those are really nice people I don't care they are not winning it doesn't like lover my their value in my eyes

so I think that winning a game is overrated winning a game is overrated all right that's going to be the quote of the episode right there I uh no I think I think you're right and it's a great point

like I think when I think about games and I am a competitive gamer like that's how I grew up that's how I paid my way to college is playing professionally so I have a competitive drive in me but when I design games, I'm trying to make them such that everybody can feel like they're winning or have a good experience

regardless of who wins, right? Ascension, I think, does this very well, right? And deck building games in general, because I'm doing my thing and I'm feeling this process of evolving, even though other people may have more score at the end, right? And I think it does it better than, say, Shards of Infinity, for example, which is much more aggressive, attacking, and you're attacking your opponent. And so, like, the choices you make matter a lot in these games

about how it feels to lose, right? Or Galaxy Truckers, it's actually hilarious to lose. Like, you watch your ship get blown apart. It's actually really fun to lose in a certain sense. So, like, it does matter where you can create a situation where people want to win, but that the experience of not winning still feels good. And that's, like, I think, a real strength of a lot of the games that you make, and I think it makes sense for that ethos.

All right. I have, I could dig into this a lot further. but we are out of the time that we have allotted here. I'll end one thing. Is there another game type category or thing or whatever, anything that you're excited about or would be interested in building that you haven't built already? Is there anything that comes to mind?

I am right now I am doing something I never did before. I'm enjoying it a lot. I am co-designing a game with another designer Because I had some, like, Coitaine mostly on some lighter stuff or expansions, but now we are doing really big and meat again. We are two designers and, like, I love the cooperation a lot. I have one rule also for cooperation.

If we have different opinions on some stuff, it should be not about persuading the other that this solution is better. If I don't like some solution and he likes, Or if he, or vice versa, if I like some social and my partner doesn't, then let's find something else that both of us will like. It will probably objectively better. So it's not about persuading the other that this way is better, but it's about trying to find ways that we both like.

Yeah. I believe it will then show on the result. And I'm really great fun doing this game. And I think that it's a sign that there will be enough people that will really have fun playing it. Okay, well, I can't wait. And hopefully maybe you love the collaboration process so much. We could find something to collaborate on together one of these days. Okay.

Awesome. Thanks so much for the time. This has been great. And people want to find you, find your games. What's the best place for them to go? If they want to go, where can they find you in your games? And if they want to see more of your stuff, what's the best place? for them to go, like a website or something?

So most of our games can be found on Czech Games Edition CGEE web page, which is Czech Edition Com, I believe. But, of course, they can click on my profile on board game geek and find all games by me because some were done with another company, like Mage Knight or the last one, Severton, were done by a different company.

Okay, fantastic. Thanks again, Lada. Really, really appreciate the time. Okay, it was really great to talk with you again. It was great, although at Jencom. Yes. I have these discussions about games. Yes, me too.

Thank you so much for listening. I hope you enjoyed today's podcast. If you want to support the podcast, please rate, comment, and share on your favorite podcast platforms, such as iTunes, Stitcher, or whatever device you're listening on. Listener reviews and shares make a huge difference and help us grow this community and it'll allow me to bring more amazing guests and insights to you. I've taken the insights from these interviews, along with my 20 years of experience in the game industry, and compressed it all into a book with the same title as this podcast, Think Like a Game Designer.

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