Ludology Epiosde 123 - Check Up

This episode of "Ludology" is produced by Andrew Dale and Michael Junker. Welcome to "Ludology," a podcast about the "Why" of gaming, with Mike Fitzgerald and Jeff Angleston. "Ludology," episode 1-2-3. Checkup. Let's get a checkup. Yes, your game checkup, or you went for a tonight if you're designing a game. You're going to hear all these things from a game design checklist. This was an idea that I had come up with probably about a year ago. I just found as I was talking to other designers and as I was kind of going through the design process myself. There were some things that kept coming up and some things just to make sure that you covered in your game. I started putting together this game design checklist. I shared it with Mike. I also gave it to my class at NYU as kind of a final thing for them to look at when evaluating their own games. Also, we've passed it around to a couple of other designers for their input. We've decided it long-lost to officially reveal the game design checklist. There's so much to it, it's going to be in three parts. Yes, we're spreading it over three shows. It's like 30 to 40 questions. I probably should have counted them. It's in the form of questions. Just a couple of caveats first. It's not like a traditional checklist. Set flaps or increase the throttle or check your pito tube. You might have if you're a pilot. They're not all just like yes or no questions. Yes, I've done this and I can move on. They're intended to force you to think about that particular aspect of the game. A lot of times you may look at it and say, "Well, no, I'm not worrying about that." This doesn't necessarily follow this rule or this point of the checklist. But I know why I'm doing it. It's something that I've thought about. I've done a little bit to mitigate it or there's some specific reason why I'm not doing that. All of these are just intended to be reminders of the different aspects of your game and the way that it fits in. We've talked a lot about the fact that you can have certain rules of game design. In most every case, you're going to break some of those rules for a reason because of highlighting another idea or another rule of game design that you're trying to accentuate in the game. As Jeff was saying, yes, these are not like make sure you do everything here kind of checklist. This is really a thought provoker. I didn't think much about this at first. I started design from the gut, I think mostly. But when you look at this, I certainly ask a lot of these questions to myself when they're designing. A lot of them that I realize, wow, that's what I definitely should be doing. I think this is really helpful for designers certainly and for players because they'll understand a little bit more about what the designers after and what he's really trying to accomplish. I think as designers, we should definitely be aware of that, hopefully. Yes. As Mike said, we've broken up the checklist into three parts. They're roughly thematic-related parts. The first one is talking about the experience of the game and just an higher level terms of what you're looking to get out of it. The second show is going to be about more about mechanics and specifically around the mechanics that are built into the game. The third one is going to be more about production and production-related issues, graphic design, that kind of stuff. Yes, because nowadays, especially even though you may not be publishing the game yourself, or of course you may be on Kickstarter, but even if you're not, how you present two publishers, the bar has just gone up so high because of tools that are out there that enable you to do a pretty good-looking prototype. Yes, so why don't we jump right into it here? Yes, we have game design checklist. Part one, the first question under the experience, and you may be saying, what's the experience? Well, we're going to talk about what we call or Jeff calls. What is the core experience? Why don't you explain that a little bit, Jeff? I certainly have my feelings about it too. That's the first question on the list. Certainly from me, that's the way I like to approach games. For me, that's the way I put it on there. We've touched on this before in the show. Some people ask the question, should you design a game mechanics first, should you design a game? Them first, but for me, what I like to try to push is what I call experience, which is sort of an amalgam of mechanics and theme, but I think really kind of rises above it and really incorporates a lot of emotion. So it's really the gut of what you're trying to do. For example, in Space Cadets, the core experience that we were trying to capture there was, we wanted the players to feel like they were flying a spaceship and we're commanding a starship, get that star trick experience, but really beyond the edge of being out of control. That was what we kept our eyes on as we were designing. I find that kind of thing so helpful because in my own design, I can lose sight of this question so quickly, because I'm starting maybe with the theme, I start with theme a lot, and then I find some mechanic. Wait a minute, this mechanic works good. Maybe I should chuck that theme, and I sometimes I'm bouncing around in between those two things, and when I finally get grounded and say, "Well, what does it that I really want the players to sort of walk away with?" Or, "What does it that I want them to be doing?" Because we're abstract, you know, we are an abstract business. Whether you like abstract games or not, what we call abstract games, but every game we do is abstract. In Jeff's game, you're not really flying the spaceship. No matter how good the theme is, I hate to tell you, you're not flying the spaceship. But we want to give that impression. So we abstract a lot of things from the experience and put them into game terms, and that's what we hope to achieve. I've actually talked to other designers about this one, because I'll be curious. I'll say, "Well, you know, a certain game they're developing or something I'm developing will chat about." You know, "What are we trying to do? What are we trying to leave the people with?" And I do find a lot of designers do not think about this. They're, "Oh, I got a new mechanic. It's great." Or, "Oh, I got a theme that's never been done." So that's enough to them. And so it's not really thought beyond that. But if you want to really have a game that works on this level, you have to get in the trenches and fight it out. And I'll tell you, I know this from several of my designs. You're going to leave a lot of things on the side of the road along the way. There are things you'll come up with say, "Oh, this was a great mechanic, but you'll realize it doesn't fit the experience." You know, it's not exited. It's not true to what we're trying to have people do. And this is not just for thematic games like Jeff's with the Space Cadets. This could be for what we really call an abstract game. Because what is that core experience you want, right? You know, you want maybe a really feel of being in a mental struggle with the other player. You want something that's maybe really going to keep you on the edge of your seat. A lot of interaction, a lot of take that going on. Who's going to be the best at this duel? So sometimes that's that core experience you want. Other times you may want something pretty passive where you're developing your own little area. They're developing the airs, the other players are. But you want to make sure people are having fun doing that. And they really get to you all. I'm building a city or I'm getting resources and using it this way that way. So whatever it is, I think this question is very important, no matter what the type of game. Some of these questions I think you can, you know, that take or leave depending on the kind of game you're doing. But what is the core experience? I really think you got to keep your eye on that for the whole time. Yeah. And, you know, as Mike said, very correctly, you know, it really does span across all types of games. You know, from war games, you know, if you say I want to do a game about, you know, the Battle of Waterloo, I want to game about World War II. Okay, you know, is the player, do you just want them to worry about the supply lines? Should they be, you know, what level are they at? What type of commands are they ordering? How much control do they have over the action? All of that's kind of contributing to the experience. And you really need to kind of sit down and think about, you know, how they're going to, the players are going to interact with this stuff before you can really start designing a lot of this stuff. Or there's so many different approaches that you can take through party games. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. And you know, the experience in party games, which is the problem a lot of people have just when they buy a party game or they bring a party game to a party and the party doesn't fit the type of game that they've got, you know, just to take two more popular games by the same designer, you've got code names is and you've got by a lot of throttle and you've got picdomania, which is a drawing game and those two games are both quote unquote party games, but they're very different types of party games. Code names is very subdued. It's more cerebral. It's trying to be clever in terms of making connections in between words. And that's going to appeal to one type of experience or experience seeker. And then you've got picdomania, which is really kind of crazy and madcap and you know, it's under a lot of time pressure and you're just trying to draw things quickly and guess what people have and it's just a ton of laughing and screaming and yelling and and that's a different. type of party. And so you've really got to kind of sit down and say, "Where am I trying to get to?" And that's, you know, and that's that I think is really going to help guide what you're doing. Now the thing that turned me off to party games is it's just that you're trivially pursued because trivially pursued, and I think people can have a different core experience. To my core experience in trivially pursued is boy am I stupid. That's, that's, and you know, I'm not sure that's a core experience that you like everybody to take away from a game, but I certainly take it away from trivially pursued because I'm usually playing with some people who know absolutely everything. There's nothing they don't know. So I see that man. There's not the people you want to play trivially pursued with. I guess not. I guess not. But, but you can see how over time, just trivially pursued goes back quite of ways. What designers are doing within the party game atmosphere is not simply, you know, questions and answers and who's smartest. I mean, look at all the, all the wonderful ways that people are trying to get to the different core experience would might be just that social experience or that fun and making you hopefully not feel stupid. And I, I really love those, those kind of party games that sort of I don't have to worry about whether I'm stupid or not. Yeah. So, you know, we spent a lot of time kind of defining experience and mainly because it's going to undergird a lot of the questions that are upcoming. They all kind of build off of that. So we just wanted to make sure that we were kind of clear on what that concept of the experience is. Obviously, it's a little fuzzy, you know, nothing on this kind of stuff is hard and fast. But, you know, hopefully you kind of get the idea of where we're, where we're coming from when we use that word experience. Yeah. And I do think this is, this is an absolute must. I mean, you really need to know what you're trying to do, what you want players to come away with, how you want players to feel. It's going to direct everything from play, testing to development to all kinds of things. So I think it's, you know, I firmly believe this one is just a, she's just an anchor to the whole thing. Okay. So that brings us to question number two, which is why would someone want to play this game? Because I put a lot of time making it. What do you mean? That's right. Kids got to go to college somehow. That's right. I've heard that answer too. So, yeah, this is a, this a fascinating one, isn't it? It's, it's one of those first questions I try to ask is, you know, why is this game necessary? Why would it ever be published? Is there anything that I'm coming up with in this game that says, yeah, somebody would want to sit down and play this and it's going to be darn sure that if you don't ask this question that publishers are going to be asking this. Oh, absolutely. And it's hard because you have to look at, because I'm thinking, well, I love it. So naturally, everybody's going to love it. I'm having fun designing it. I'm working hard. So obviously, they'll all want to play it, but not the case. So you're really, it's a hard one sometimes. You have to get away from the ego and sort of look at what's happening in the game and certainly a very important very important question to be able to say, yes, I think I know why or at least some of it. Yeah. And I think that this ties in with question number three, which I'm going to kind of bundle in here too, which is where is the fun for the players? Because we've talked, you know, we had a show a few months back talking about, you know, serious games and questioning whether games really need to be fun. And, you know, but certainly the vast majority of games are fun. And there's different types of fun that people can have, you know, simulating the Battle of Waterloo is a certain type of fun that's different from Pictionary. But you still have to say, you know, how are players going to get enjoyment out of the game? Yeah, I think for now, this is just one for me because I do not answer this question well on my designs. And I know I don't. So what I do is I put a lot of stuff on the design and then I watch people playing it. And I watch them very carefully. I don't necessarily listen to what they say in these early, what I call silent play tests, just sort of seeing how people respond to the rules and start playing. But I watch like a hawk. And almost every design I've had, the answer will come from that experience. You know, you watch people smile, you watch and you see when they're struggling, when they throw their brows, when they're having a hard time. And of course, as Jeff said, this fun concept doesn't mean just, ah, laugh fun. There are people that have fun playing chess in the middle and I was one of them when I was an active chess player. They're, you know, from a heavy euro to a war game as Jeff was saying, you can have fun being in that historical situation and trying to work it out. So fun is not meant here to be particularly light. It's meant to be engaging and immersive. You know, what is there in this game that is keeping that person immersed? Maybe that's a good way to put it to. But I find, boy, you, you've got to find this. And when you find it, you got to take out everything else. That's my personal viewpoint on it. This may be the most important thing for me is, you know, what's the payoff for the players? And when you find that, make sure it's front center. Yeah. And we talk a lot about, kind of dropping stuff from the games and from the design. And I think that you and I are of a similar design approach, Mike, that we just throw everything at the wall. Everything, everything. And we're taking stuff out. We don't, we don't gradually build in and layer into mechanics and stuff like that. Usually we start with too many. I sometimes find myself adding stuff later on in the process. But, but usually it's, it's the other way, like you said. And yeah, it's, you know, you want to, you want to focus in on, you know, where the players are having fun. And, and that should be tying into the experience that you want to have. And then you've got to look at what's getting in the way of the players having fun. Like you said, you know, what's difficult for them to understand? What's, you know, is there a lose a turn space? You know, if taking your turn is fun, you know, don't have your players lose a turn. I mean, simple stuff like that. We're going to get more into that in the mechanics episode. But, you know, I think it's important to identify the type of fun that you want the players to have and, and, and how that fun is being expressed in the game. Yeah. Find out why they're even having it. Now, in my game, Dragon Island, which, um, I'm going to be able to announce pretty soon, uh, who's publishing and everything. But I've talked about it for it. If it was a long development, Jeff played a few versions. I thought, oh my god, the fun is this sort of original idea of how to get resources and fighting dragons and making dragons your pets. And I think all that was fine and good. People seem to enjoy it. But then I, I did one little thing sort of late middle. I had these gold cards that you see in every game, right? Be the first person to get this or this and take that card with two points or something. Because I just needed some more points generation from somewhere. And I was never particularly happy with it. You know, players liked it. Okay. But then I said, you know, if there's some way I could build this into a board itself, wouldn't that be cool? So I came up with this idea, uh, I'll just call it treasure maps at this point. But it revolves, it resolves around what's on the board. And just, and I was totally stunned because I had just a few of them in the game. And the players just lit up like Christmas trees. I mean, they were so excited. That's all they wanted to do was get more treasure maps that I'm thinking of myself. Whoa, I had no idea this would be so. So now there's like, like 50 of them. They came. There's now it's a central part of the games. I realized, wow, I cannot ignore this. You know, everybody's just saying, wow, this is fun. They like the other stuff too. But that just became a central point. So when you see that happen, respond to it. You know, don't don't say, well, that's a passing thing, whatever. Because it was absolutely. Yeah. You want to, you want to react to that? There is, there is absolutely no problem with, you know, changing the direction that you've got or modifying your experience to fit what you're observing in terms of the way that the players are reacting. So you can kind of take it both ways. You can change the mechanics to try to push players closely experience and the fun that you want. If they're not getting what you want or you can kind of change your expectations about, you know, where it's going. And I've told this story before again about space cadets. But, you know, when we first started, it was we wanted it to be more like a star simulator. And then as we were watching people play the games, people wanted to roleplay. People wanted to, you know, say, you know, I don't want to bore, you know, I need more power captain and stuff like that. Exactly. Yeah. Those are cool things. That's what they wanted to do. And the game was getting in the way of people doing that. So, you know, so it's kind of it. There's different ways of expressing the experience of, you know, I want to be, I want to be fun, a starship. And then, you know, as we were watching people, we, we, we saw that that was where the fun was coming from and tried to change the game around to not get in the way of people being able to do that. Very important. Yeah. The next one is interesting. And I'm not, I'm not into the science and the research to be really good at this. But the question is, who is your target audience? And I don't know, this, this, this doesn't always just involve age group, right? Jeff, it could involve certain people who have a gaming preference or, or not. Right. You've got experience levels. You've got ages. You've got, you know, whether it's kind of, you know, for the family gamer and not for the family gamer, you know, it's, yeah, you got to, you got to know who your target audience is. And, and again, this is kind of tied up in the experience part of it, you know, because it's possible that your experience could be at odds with your target audience. Or if you know your target audience is, it's got certain, you know, certain type of game that they're looking for, then that's going to force you to be in, you know, to make certain design decisions. Yeah, sometimes when a designer will take another game sort of as a basis, they're trying to improve another game. I've heard this a lot where I don't know, let's just pick one. That's really good, like, through the ages and somebody's saying, well, I'm going to make this game for people who like through the ages, but maybe find one thing lacking and so they'll play this game. So that is a target audience. It may be kind of niche, but maybe it's what nations did when you think about it to to begin with, you know, I don't know. But it was I don't usually think in that term, like try to, you know, take in a, you know, I don't try to tackle a game that I think is sort of at the top of the genre. But nation certainly did a nice job of resending it in a different way a little bit. So I think your target can be as specific as that, or it can be just everybody who loves a certain kind of game, or you go after a certain age group. So that's sort of wide open. I suppose there could be some games where you're just going to say everybody. And you know, you don't really have a target, I suppose that's possible too. And I think that's particularly important when you're aiming at a family market. Also, it's that it's going to guide you in certain directions. We've talked about with Survive Space Attack that when we were designing, you know, we knew for sure that this, you know, this was going to be for like ages eight and up, you know, seven, eight and up. It's a family game. That's the market that we wanted to go for. We were told we could add a teeny bit of extra complexity, but nothing that would kind of take it away from an eight year old being able to play. And you know, one of the versions that we had, the monsters, you know, the creatures that were attacking the space station were little spaceships actually that were flying around. And but it was just as we were testing it out and playing with it, just the taking a fighter and shooting guys that were floating in space. It just didn't feel, it just felt kind of weird and and itki sort of from from from really any perspective, certainly from a family game perspective as opposed to just sort of a nameless, you know, more generic alien type thing that that eats the, the guy's floating in space. Now from the guy, the perspective of the guy floating in space, I guess it doesn't really matter. But it totally felt different, you know, just from a thematic standpoint and from other, you know, other perspectives. And you know, that's that's something that you need to be concerned about when we were doing Dragon and Flag and you know, we talked about a lot about this in the naming episode that the, you know, the target. We didn't want to make it just like an adult game because it was set in a tavern, you know, which which we wanted to try to, you know, make it more family friendly, even though it's about, you know, a bar fight, you know, it wasn't like you were taking jagged pieces of glass and broken bottles and stabbing people with them. You know, we wanted to make it more, you know, cartoony kind of violence. And so that informed a lot of the design decisions and a lot of the things that we did, even to the point that there is a, we're still, you know, we're going to do this if there's room on the punch board. I think there is. But, you know, one of the things you need to grab is there is the dragon, the dragon flagging, which if you grab it, it's in the middle of the room and it's, you know, filled with the special ale. And if you grab it, then you get your special power. We actually are also including a plate of cookies, which we always had to play cookies that we use. I found it at the dollhouse store once or something, a little plate of cookies. So we're probably going to include that just, you know, again, because that's our target audience potentially and, you know, so people can try it both ways or what they want to do. And you're not, and you're just grabbing reputation from other people, you never actually damaged people or hurt them or, you know, knock them out. So. I give you a good tip on target audience. And Jeff did this in Space Cadets. When you're going for a pretty wide age range and you want a game to be played by families, you know, think about it. That if the kids are playing and the adults are playing, have the adults be able to be in a role where they can help the kids. And of course, in Space Cadets, that's just all of it a place in the game. And not always do all games do that, but you really have a chance now to have an experience for kids. I was very, very happy in my little baseball highlights game that I get so much mail from fathers and sons. You know, they sit down, the father can explain some of the nuances to the mechanic, but it's not that difficult. So seven, eight year old kids are having a great time with their, with their dads and their moms and whoever in that game. So those kind of things, if you can be aware of that, wait, is this going to only be sort of adult gamers? Or I really have a chance to set something up where kids can be brought into this. If you're after that, that's one of the tricks I think is to give, you know, have a role in that game of teacher for the adult who can help the kid along. Right. Okay. And, you know, it's just a good thing to know and keep in mind when you sit down and start designing, you know, who's the audience that you're trying to reach? Because again, that's going to tie into so many of these other different things. So question number five, and this can be a really tricky one to answer. And this may be one of these ones that you don't want to answer. At least you know it is. That's sure. Question number five, what makes this game different from other games that are on the market already? Absolutely. Nothing is one of the answers. As an answer, I come up with a lot on something I'm working on and then I, then you try to figure out what I'm doing now, then should it really even be on the market, you know, it's one of those questions. We have so many games coming out and we have a lot of games in the same genres. So the answer might be narrow, but I think it's a good, you know, I think it's a good thing to be able to answer and have something that's a little different, right? Yeah. I mean, again, there's got to be a reason why somebody's going to buy this rather than something else. And maybe it's just the theme, you know, maybe, you know, you took this, this same basic mechanic from another game or another game that you had done and you just kind of re-femed it or something. And so this is going to appeal to beekeepers and that's your target audience. When we did our publisher's question episode at BGG in November, that's certainly one of the main questions a publisher's going to ask that I see what makes this game different. Why in the world should even look at this game, that kind of thing? Yeah. And if it's, yeah, if it's just a me too game, especially in this market, something's going to have to make it stand out, whether it's a brand, you know, some sort of license, which, you know, it's hard for a designer just to kind of get on their own or something, but there's got to be something that's different about it that's going to appeal to a publisher and also appeal to somebody that's, you know, looking on the store shelf to see what it is. And hopefully that difference also makes it a good game. I mean, it's going to get like, well, this is different because it's really a bad game. Yeah. The other version of this is good. Okay. Question number six, do all game mechanics support the experience? Now, the tough question, isn't it? That's a, there's a lot that goes into that. Right. And we kind of alluded to that earlier when we talked about trimming stuff that's getting in the way of the players having the experience. So, and that's why it's nice to kind of have that in mind because then you can look at all of the different game mechanics and say, do we need this? Do we need this? Do we need this? What role is this really playing in the game? Yeah. I remember playing baseball highlights early on with a non-gamer. I just wanted to see, you know, I was starting my testing and just, forget what I was seeing, what a non-gamer who was a baseball fan would feel about this. So, we're just playing. Now, this was early. I did not have anything like an on deck. I didn't have anything where you could sort of store a player and maybe bring it later. And he was all, he intuitively were playing the game and said, "Wait a minute. I don't have anybody for this situation. Can I pinch it?" And so, he just saying that sort of brought to my mind, well, of course you have to be able to pinch it. That would support the experience. So, I know I have to make that mechanics. So, those kind of things, the more you can do, once you get your theme and you get some mechanics, I think the more calm, the better that theme develops and people will even give them to you, right? Well, I'm a baseball player. I want to be able to do this. I want to be able to do that. I'm a detective. I should be doing this or that. The players will give you those and you've got to put yourself in the roles and just find mechanics that support that. That's why for me, it's harder to start with just mechanics because I don't really know what experience I'm supporting yet. So, it's a little easier for me to start with theme and go from there. Yeah. And it's really, really critical to look at every single mechanic through this lens. You know, you really want to, you know, a lot of times you fall in love with those darlings and you say, "Is this really necessary?" And, you know, again, we've talked about this also in my World War II game. I had Malta in there forever. Yes. And, you know, finally I took it out because it just wasn't doing, you know, wasn't really supporting experience. It wasn't doing what I wanted to do. I had strategic warfare in there because, you know, I thought that that was necessary and you know, we ended up acting it because it wasn't, it was just attracting from the main focus of what we wanted to do with the experience of the game. So you got to, throughout the process, and especially, you know, as you're making those final tweaks, you really got to take a really close, hard, clear-eyed look at the mechanics and experience and anything that's mismatching between the two. And really, you know, maybe you need to keep it, but you really got to justify to yourself. Yeah. I know what this is. This is why I need this. I know what this happens to you and not Jeff, but when I start writing rules, and I'll mean just the outline early, I start with an outline and try to keep some sense of rules going. And I really sit down to do final rules. I can be writing about a mechanic and all of a sudden it'll just hit me. What in the world is this doing in the game? I mean, it'll just hit me that I have to do two or three extra sentences to explain it. I have to sort of make up some reason. It should be there and thinking to myself, why wouldn't I even do this? So I just take it out at that point. So even at that point, it's like when you look at your rules hard, I mean really hard and say does all this make sense for this experience? And I'm-- I'm big on eliminating rules sentences whenever I can. So if I've got some little extra thing that doesn't really add to the experience, I can just drop that out. - Take it out. Yeah, I agree. And I'm getting better at that. That's a skill that I've been developing. I wasn't good at it first, but I feel like I'm improving in that way. I've got a ways to go, but I'm improving. And the problem is is that sometimes you've got rules A, B and C and you go and you change C. And you think it's just affecting C. - Oh no. - But then you go back and look at A and A made sense with old C, but now you've got new C and maybe you don't need A at all. And sometimes you find, I found that my designs end up in a place that I never could have gotten from version A to version X directly. - No. - But because I made a little change, which was B and then another little change which is C and then, oh, now that I've done this, hey, maybe I can do this. And you just, it's very interesting how I find the evolution of those things. And you can make these tiny little incremental changes and find yourself so far away from where you started. But at each of those steps, you gotta really go back and look again at critically at all of those things. And in light of this change, do I still need this other stuff? - And that's probably the first thing I've ever learned because my first game design was a trading card game. And my second and third, I did a bunch of trading card games. And in those games, you change card 103 and it's effect. And before you know it, you're realizing, oh my God, this whole tree of effects I had that were off this costing system or whatever and now completely changed. You really start to understand that domino effect and in any kind of game, yes. That's why you just don't wanna make those last minute changes the night before they hit the print button. (laughs) You want at least I've had a little time to make sure it doesn't cause a ripple effect that you weren't ready for. - Yeah, absolutely. That can, it's like there's an edifice there and all the different pieces are kind of supporting and interlocked and it's hard to just pull one thread here sometimes so that the whole tapestry unraveling. Okay, question number seven, is the duration appropriate for the experience? - Wow, another good one. - Yeah, and I've run into this both sides of this with games. I've had some games that there's not much going on really and maybe it would be fun for 15 minutes or 20 minutes but it's going on for an hour and a half. - Yeah, that phrase overstays, it's welcome. - Yeah, you know what? - And I've had some games where based on what's going on, it's just starting to get good and then all of a sudden it ends. And I think we've all had games that feel like that. - I've had a lot of publishers, one of the first questions they asked me before I show them something is how long does the game take? And if I, let's just say I say 90 minutes, they say too long for the experience. I'm like, well you haven't played the game yet, you know? But there's in today's publishing game industry, there appears to be, and there are exceptions, but there appears to be a love for the shorter, the better. And that's just one of those things that you've got to be aware of. So if you're in a slow forcer, if you're in a slow forcer, it's easier demo, if you're in a show, you know, if you've got to spend half an hour teaching so we're going to play a game, it's a pain in the neck to sell it at a trade chain. - At Gen Con or something like that? - Yes, it is. - It's got a lot of issues. But you know, there's certainly, I've had plenty of games where I feel like it's just, you know, just getting going, I'm just getting some combos going, and then boom, it ends. And I can also be frustrating. - Yes, it can't. We have, yes, there's several games I feel are just too short. I'm just starting to get rolling and oops, it's over, what happened. And that's the experience, again, that's the experience you want to give somebody. So, you know, the experience you're trying to give somebody is getting an engine going or whatever, you know, you got to make sure that you let them get to that point. - Yeah, or cut the beginning part out so they get to it faster, something. But it's got to all mesh in terms of the experience and the length of what it is. - Yeah, it needs a beginning, middle and end. I think most games do. And especially if you're into a game with some narrative or arc or building an engine, you want to see that engine perform, you want to see the story come to some kind of, a conclusion, yes, I think all that's very important. - Okay, number eight. Are there things for players to learn and get better at? Is this appropriate for the length and experience of the game? - Yeah, this is a tough one too. I'm not particularly good at figuring out if people are going to get better. I mean, I don't consciously build in levels of strategy. Do you do it consciously, Jeff, or does it just kind of happen for you? - I do it somewhat consciously. Certainly like DiceDool, when we were working on it, we knew that there was a basic level of way to play and we built in little combos and tricks and things that you could kind of uncover. So we did kind of build those layers in that for the players to discover, just because we had to play the game 57 times. - Yeah, so I think that's the key. - But you know, so there's gotta be something interesting and for the design to play over and over and over again. - Right, I do make changes for that. The thing I occupy a lot of my time with is, what is in the game for the first time player to try to do? So I try to create sort of a beginning heuristic, if you will, something that's kind of obvious. But yeah, okay, the object's been a lot of points by doing this, so I'll do that. And of course, if the game is good over time, there's just other paths and other things that the players will uncover. As a designer, I find that's just from the work part of it, just testing and playing and playing by myself and saying, "I'm not having much fun yet." So, okay, what if I try this, what if I try that? So just in that beginning stage of trying things, I'll sometimes hit on something that other players. And of course, the really fun I think is watching your play testers find things you never thought of. Things you never thought would work. And that's both fun and scary. - Fun and scary, absolutely. (laughing) - Yeah, and I think the key things here again are duration and experience. There are some games that they don't need to be all that deep. They don't necessarily need to be, have all those levels and different things. Maybe the basic strategies there, when you see it, but that's fine for that type of game. So you gotta approach it, you gotta look at it and light of what you're trying to accomplish. And that's why we keep going back to that experience and just no right answer for this. It's not like every single game has to have nine layers of heuristics or else nobody's gonna want it. That is totally not true. - No, it is. - Now there is. - The humanity has no real heuristics. But the level of engagement that they have, it's very easy for people to jump in and do it. And you know what you're supposed to do. And you're not gonna get any better at it. But that fits in with what they were trying to achieve. - Sometimes I've found, I've found with my first Mr. Rummy game, Jack the Ripper, which I spent three years on. I've found that a lot of players, because of the based on Rummy and their first few plays, they said, well, we got the right card, you win. And that's fine. They were having fun playing a Rummy game. What I had to work at somehow was convincing players or having players play enough to find those other things in the game. So what I did was at conventions, I carried a $100 bill and I just said if anybody can beat me at Jack the Ripper, I'll hand them a $100 bill. And now that worked about three years, nobody could. But of course, eventually game players are game players. So then I lost under an hour, so I said, well, I think I'll stop doing that now. But I think it got the point across a little bit with the harder court gamers that, you know, because of what's in the game, there's more that you can do than just playing sets of cards and going out. You know, there's other things happening in the game. So that's what I tried to do with each of those games. So I think there's something to be said for finding a way to communicate to the players that there is something there. And I'm not sure about that, always how to do it. But do you hope the game will be fun enough so they'll discover that? - Okay. Question number nine. What are the decision points in the game? - Yeah, I'm looking forward to this one. Is what is a decision point, Jeff? I want to know. - Well, it's basically the choices that the players have to make. - Okay, so there's, so what are the choices the players have to make? And I think that this is kind of, you know, this is kind of straddling between experience and mechanics. But I kind of decided that this one perhaps was a little bit better in the experience because again, the decisions that the players need to make should support that experience, should support the target audience, should support all the duration. All of those types of things need to be considered. So I feel like this is something that kind of contributes to it as well. So when it comes to a player's turn, how many different decisions do they need to make? You know, how do you indicate to them what they're supposed to do? Does that support the overall feeling that you're trying to give them? - Yeah, is there something in the game that sort of points them in the direction? You know, some games use special powers or an advantage in the game or something that makes it kind of obvious? But I'll have to tell you, there are some wonderful games. They're very, they're usually the complex heroes, like a game like Trey John by Stefan Feld. I remember sitting down at that game first play and just saying, oh my God, I got all these places that I can put this worker, that's, I have all these decision points, what do I do? And I had no idea. So sometimes if a game is that challenging, I guess the idea is pick one and just sort of see what happens. - Right, but at least you've identified what where the decisions are. I mean, this is kind of one of my key questions. I, you know, a lot of people kind of, you know, come to me and want me to take a look at their game or I go to play testing events [BLANK_AUDIO] and we'll do playtests of games that are at various levels of completion. And one of the questions I always try to ask early of the designer, especially if they're just kind of describing it to me, we don't know what opportunity to really play is this question. You know, what are the decision points? What are the decisions that the players have to make? Another question is asking you, is just kind of what separates a good player from a not so good player. You know, why is one player gonna win and then the player's not? What are those decisions that he or she is making? That will push them into the lead. So, you know, I think that's, you know, in some games it's just luck. You know, they'll, if the person rolls higher, they're gonna win. You know, in some games, you know, you can get into the intricacies of it, but at least know what that is and think about how that reflects on the complexity and how interesting it's gonna be for certain types of players and how much longevity perhaps it will have. - Yeah, I've even heard people, designers talk about the right number of decisions on any given turn. I'm not sure you can simplify to that degree because some will be related to sort of your experience in the game at that moment, right? And I, so it's very hard to do that, I think. But yeah, you want points in the game where people feel, ooh, I've got, this is a major point. And it sort of goes to me trying to get, oh wow, in the game, I call it, like these moments in the game that you're gonna remember. And so boy, that point I had to decide whether I'm gonna be this kind of person, or that kind of person, I'm gonna go for this, or go for that. I think that can be, you know, those can be very satisfying memories for people and sort of give them part of that game experience. And they're hard to invent as a designer, I find. They sort of come out of the play and just sort of, okay, what makes it interesting and this kind of stuff? I'm not sure you can say, well, it always should be three decisions or two, or, you know, 'cause like I said, great stuff in field game when you're just learning it, you got like 20 decision points out there. So you're just gonna go by a field of what you think you might enjoy doing. - Right. Okay, question number 10, our pen ultimate question, this episode, is there a gameplay arc/narrative arc that is appropriate to the duration and experience? - Well, it's the hottest thing right now. So if you want your game published, just tell 'em there's a story to it. I mean, that's gonna go a long way. - Well, there's two different things here. I mean, one is, I wanna kind of differentiate between it actually telling a story per se, or having story elements versus, kind of just having a beginning, middle, and end, which I kind of consider is sort of the gameplay arc, which I think is somewhat important as well. - Oh yeah. Yeah, even total abstract games can have this. Like I'm a big fan of the GIF series, Chris Burm series, which by the way, I was checking, before this episode, I was looking again at all the listen geek, and I don't look at it enough, 'cause I'm surprised when I see certain games way, way up in the listing, some of them I love, but I just didn't think they had that much of a following. But even a very basic abstract game, like chess, certainly has a beginning, middle, and end. And there's the opening, there's the mid-game, and there's the end-game at Bory, they different, and knowing when to go from one to the other, that's sort of the game's arc itself. So yes, you're right, we're not just talking about the pandemic legacy story that develops, but the game itself can have its own arc, and if it does, does it, is it appropriate for the length of the game, and do you experience the finish of that arc? I mean, I think that's where this lies, and I think it's a very subtle kind of interesting question that I think you could answer, you could ask this question pretty much about every game design. I can't imagine something that wouldn't apply. Yeah, and to be honest with you, as I said, I can use this checklist on my own designs at various points. At some points, I just don't have answers for some of these questions. Right, and at some points I do. But with Dragon and Flagon, our Tavra ball game, this question is one of the ones that's given us fits. And it's the one thing that concerns me that I think is perhaps a weakness in the design. It goes for, it's kind of time-based, so when you do actions, they take a certain amount of time, and then when your turn comes, you move on a time track, and then when your marker comes back up again, then you get to do your next action. But there's kind of a beginning phase. Everybody starts in the corners of the room, and everyone can rush towards the middle to try to grab the special Dragon Flagon or play the cookies depending on the version that you're playing. And that unlocks your special power. But other than that, it's really just chaos going on, and you doing different things until the game just kind of ends. After 24 time steps, or it's a variable ending, it may end on one of four different time steps to throw a little bit of uncertainty into it. But basically, I kind of am a little bit concerned that it's like a wind-up organ, and you just goes and goes, and goes and goes, and then it just kind of stops. Hey, but your first expansion can be what happens after. Like, we're going to give everybody a new bird. You don't have to drive home tonight, because we know you're in a mess. Right. Something like that. The Uber expansion. Yeah, so we-- And we tried a lot of different things to try to get a rena, because it was a concern. And honestly, I think it's a little bit of a weakness, even now as much fun as it is to play. I think sometimes it doesn't come to that big climactic inclusion. But there's really-- we looked at a lot of different things to do at the end, like also in the police charge in, the constables, or the town guards charge into the room. And it kind of changes the rules at the end. Or in an earlier version, we used to have it that as you took damage, you got more abilities. So actually, getting damage, you got more powerful, because you got access to special abilities. But that had various other issues, which I won't go into details on. But we've really been wrestling with this and trying a bunch of different things. This is one of those examples where I have an OK answer to this question. I don't have a fully satisfying answer to this question. But I know why I did the things that I did. And I feel like I looked at it from different ways to try to deal with this, and that we're dealing with it in the best way can, because of the nature of the game. I'm not sure. When I say it's an important question, I'm not sure it's one that has to be completely answered. I mean, I had the same problem with Dragon Island. Very often, finding how to end a game is pretty important. And I had a lot of mechanic issues, scoring issues, that things that were directing it. In the end, depending on how many number of players you're playing with, the island's going to be this many tiles. So when you get to that, many tiles, the game's over. And sure, it'd be nice to have some sort of climactic thing that happens there, but it just never worked as a positive part of the experience. So I took the other way out, what you could think about. I call Dragon Island the first game of a trilogy. So there is something else that happens in the same kind of environment in game two. And then a big wrap up in game three. So I suppose you could also say, this is Dragon Flag in part one, where you're just going to mix it up. And then go on from there. I'll see if I can convince our publisher. There you go. Why not? I think it works. OK. And our final question for this episode, question number 11, how do the players interact with each other and is it appropriate for the experience? Very interesting question. And boy, have we learned a lot as designers in general about player interaction? I remember the days when it was-- when the take that was always sort of open and obvious, right? I played this card on you. And it's like punching you in the nose. Yeah, exactly. Sorry, you're going back to the beginning. But how unsatisfying that could be for players and how players can feel bad for playing the card. It opens up a whole area. Do you even want player interaction? I like it. And my game is when I can figure it out. But whatever you're doing doesn't make sense. I mean, is it something where players are not going to feel terrible? Yet they're going to have fun still. And yet they're feeling their strategies being made. And they're feeling that they're playing by themselves. So there's a lot that goes into this question. Yeah, there is. And again, the key thing is to come back to the experience because there's a huge spectrum of possible player interactions and depending on the experience that you want, some are good for that, some are bad for that. But there's no player interaction that's always bad under every experience. There are some games where having no player interaction at all, just completely parallel multiplayer solitaire is what you want. There's some games where the take that mechanism is the right thing that you want to do. So that's why we started off with the question of what is your experience that you want? What emotions do you want the players to feel? What stories do you want them to walk out of the game with? And that's going to help guide this interaction. Also your audience. What's your target audience? How long do you want the game to be? I mean, all of these things come down and need to be supported by player interactions at Gamewalk and stuff like that that have fit into that. Very often the theme of the game will tell you about interaction, too. Like, I'm going to guess, and it's a wild guess. But that in Dragon Flagon, there is some player interaction. Just a good thing of wild guess. Yeah, it's pretty interactive. Yes, I think. So-- But we try not to be feel bad interactive. Well, exactly. You take. reputation from people but you can never knock somebody totally out of the game. There's always ways to come back. Yes, we know from Richard. Richard Garfield has a couple of rule, you know, things that he abides by no matter what in games. Not that there aren't exceptions, but he's pretty, and I think he shows this in a game like King of Tokyo. But what Richard feels is that in any multiplayer game, one player should not be able to direct an attack or direct affecting one other player. He feels that's too much of a choice to put on the player and involves too many king-making things, too many bad feelings, too many, you know what I mean? Too many things that take away from the game is pure competitiveness, especially if you're trying to make a game competitive and it's multiplayer, you know, multi-sided. So, with King of Tokyo, even though it's a lighter family game, he, you know, if you're in Tokyo and you're rolling, you're attacking everybody. And if you're outside, you're all attacking just the King of Tokyo. So, you know, that's just one example of how he applies that, you know, that kind of special rule for him in most of his games. And I'm sure he has made exceptions of that, too, but I learned from that because to me, that's an example of how you make the game more pleasant for everybody, understanding that that one person isn't just after you. Now, he used to be done a lot because of catch the leader and I have played games that still do that. They sort of expect the other player as well. They'll obviously attack this guy because he's the leader. Sometimes they don't do that. So, that's true. That doesn't always go that way. Doesn't go that way always. So, it's just a little thing about interaction. It certainly is an area I think that we keep learning and we keep doing better. Okay. So, that brings us to the end of part one. We are going to post these questions, you know, as we kind of reveal them on the show and future shows on both the Lodology.net website. We're probably also put them up on the guild and find a few other ways to publicize them. We're pretty excited about this list. Again, the intent is not that, you know, you're going to look at all of these and say, you know, I know exactly what this is or, you know, I have to meet all of these points. But, you know, I hope you get the feeling from this that this is just different ways of looking at your game, different ways of thinking about it and, you know, that you have some answer or feel satisfied in your mind that you've done the best that you can to make all of these different pieces kind of fit together. And if you're a game designer, what you need to do is go out and get a big blackboard and put it in your little design room there and list these as we reveal them. Just write them on the blackboard and refer to them often. I think that's the best tip we can offer. Yes. Okay. Okay. So we've gone through a lot of 11 whole questions here. Yeah. Do we have a room in our brains for seven more? I think so, especially these particular questions. So let's get to the ludological lighting round. Question number one, of the following games, which is best in your opinion, providing a great core experience. So we're going to ask you this about pandemic legacy, Terra Mystica and Yench. Yeah. For me, I'm going to go with pandemic legacy on this. I don't find that Terra Mystica has a super coherent core experience for me. I find that it's just all over the map. And you know, for me, Yench has an abstract. I don't feel as much of a core experience. But what about you? Well, for me, it's interesting. Pandemic legacy, which I'm involved in right now, we've gotten to May or June. So we got in one big reveal, which of course I will not spoil, but it's been a lot of fun. But I have to say that I am sort of aware that I'm playing a board game during it, and it's not a bad thing. I'm enjoying the experience tremendously. But there's a certain abstraction to the experience I find in pandemic, just because of the kind of game it is. And again, it's a fabulous experience. I'm loving every minute of it. Terra Mystica, there's one thing I love in Terra Mystica. I love transforming the land. The problem is I can't get immersed in that because I got to worry about all these other things in the game. So it's obviously for people who like to really put on the thought head. But Yench, I love Yench. I love that whole series. But Yench to me gets me into this core experience of just how the game unfolds. And I just have such a satisfying feeling when I'm finished with the gaming Yench, because the moves you make early have a lasting effect, even though you're not always sure of which direction it's going to go. But you can make some key moves. It just really, really make that game for me. So I guess the point of this was I wanted to show three very different types of games to sort of show that our core experience can apply to almost any of these kind of games. Okay. Question number two. So we're going to go back to the question, why would someone want to play this game? Which is earlier. And I'm going to ask you that question for diamonds. Okay. Which is one of your designs. Yeah, I've thought about this a lot, because you want to sometimes give that quick elevator pitch and you're talking about a game. You know, why would someone want to play this game? Well, I think I have to admit that with diamonds, it's probably anybody can play it. I mean, you could sit down, non-gamers, gamers, and hopefully they all have a good time. But at least they all will be able to understand the concepts and play the game. And Jeff, we were going to ask you the same thing for space cadets, dice stool. Well, I think dice stool has been a while since I've done the elevator pitch for dice time. But I think that, you know, it's team versus team in a board game is really unique, especially coupled with the real time. And you know, just this dynamic, super exciting real time feel that you're, you know, flying a starship as a team and having that camaraderie and, you know, just trying to match which against the other team as fast as you can. Yeah, the, for me, is that frenetic feel in that game? I mean, you get so tense. I mean, you get a towel nearby because you're going to do some sweat and I mean, it's just amazing. Now, for both of us to take a game that I've wondered this question about many times. Why would someone want to play diplomacy? Well, you know, diplomacy, I think it's, it's the ultimate, you know, matching wits against people and using psychology and, you know, manipulating other people and, you know, trying to get people to do what you want. So it's, you know, it kind of brings that down to the barest of essences. And of course, losing friends for life doesn't, doesn't concern you that much then. Well, that's part of the game. Yeah, that's right. Yeah, diplomacy, you know, for me, it's a, it's one of those close things to real life, you know, the kind of decisions, the kind of promises you make and then when you break them, it's just as sometimes too close for me to, yeah, I, I, and there's plenty of people that don't think that, you know, why would someone want to play this game? That's right. And they look at diplomacy and they're like, I would not want to play. Yeah, well, they, they're not, yeah. And it's got a core experience. I mean, diplomacy is a very definite core experience and point of view and, you know, you buy into it or you don't. Yep. So we got a question number three here. We want you to answer the question, where's the fun for the players in the following games in your opinion? So Jeff, we've got trivial pursuit, magic, the gathering and Calis. Okay. Well, you know, trivial pursuit is, you know, I think the, the fun in that is, you know, it's, it can be fun, you know, kind of matching with and, and just trying to remember answers to the, to the trivia questions. I mean, that's really the main element of fun there. So the other people find that fun or not is questionable. Yeah. So, so you're one of those people that usually does know the answer as far as I'm not that great. No, yeah. Okay. Uh, yeah, that was always, you know, I, I, people always pick me for trivia competitions. Big mistake. People pro tip. Not good. Not good. If there's, if there's going to be like, you know, math problems as far as trivia pursuit, that I'm there for you. But, uh, yeah, if I need to know who we start and, you know, some movie in 1946, it ain't going to happen. Um, magic, the gathering, I, you know, I was in a huge magic player, um, but, you know, my understanding of the game and the culture of the game is, I think that the deck building is a big part of it, but also just kind of the model of the collectibility. I think is also a big source of fun for, for people. And as far as Calis goes, you know, I think that it's, you know, in a lot of euros kind of have this, the same thing is it's, you know, it's kind of working with the systems, you know, kind of using the resources that you have and trying to kind of out guess and outplan your opponents because there's no chance elements at all other than trying to figure out what your opponents are going to be doing. Now, that's what Ryan would say too. I was sort of trying to channel Ryan in this one because I know that's his favorite game. Yeah. That's his field. I'm sure, right? Because, yeah, so somebody really knew that would master. For me, trivia, pursuit, the fun, wow, I just don't have much fun, I have to say it out. I mean, it's because I don't know a lot of the answers. It became hugely popular. It's it all. Listen, I did. I played it a lot because everybody wants to play it. So I would, I guess the fun for me was getting on a team or getting with somebody else who knew a lot more than me. So I was able to, you know, to put them on the spot. Imagine the gathering. Wow, I grew up. I imagine the gathering. It's a game that made me a game designer. So for me, it's one, it's that very simple thing we should talk about as an atom of a game or even more centered that. For me, Magic of the Gathering gives you all these little chances to realize in your hand you have a success. You have something you can do that takes a little bit of thought process. Like, "Okay, I can play this manna. That enables me to do this and then do this." And that chain of little events that lead to something successful makes a game for me. Winner lose. I just love that fact. Just in the early days, just, "Oh, I have a wood out. I have wood. I can play an outfit." Well, whatever it is. That, to me, was something new in games at that time. And Kayla's, "I have to admit, I've played it. I think it's a beautiful design. The fact that there's no hidden information really drives me insane. Because I started looking at what everybody has on every turn and trying to figure out where they could go and how they could spend the end is just drives me nuts." It's hard for me to shut that off with that game of Kayla's. But I understand how the fans love it and it's a classic, absolute classic. Okay. Question number four. I'm going to put you on the spot now to identify the target audience for these games. Oh, okay. You ready? Yes. Okay. First one, you should be familiar with Pokemon trading card game. Yeah. The only reason I can say something here because I know what their target audience sits because I didn't make the game. But of course, I work for them and I make their pre-destructed deck. So I know the target that we're trying to go for now with Pokemon is very interesting because there's different levels of targets. You have a five-year-old, that's a four-year-old that likes the art and the cards and is starting to collect Pokemon cards. And then you get into that eight-year-old range and some bright seven-year-olds and even six-year-olds start playing the game. Sometimes they're playing a nonversion. But for their really trading card game market that they're really looking for is that eight to sixteen and sometimes beyond sixteen. But there's that core eight to sixteen that really wants to master and play that game well. And that is the target for Pokemon. Okay. Yeah, I would agree with that. I think that they've got a definite demographic of ages that they're the AMAT. So. Did you see the Super Bowl commercial? I did see the Super Bowl commercial. Interesting. Interesting commercial, I thought. It was kind of like appealing to that. Yes, I want to be something. I want to do something for kids to feel challenged and stuff. Those interesting things. And certainly the kids they had in there were like seven to ten. Yes. That's what it's like. Okay. Second game. Target audience patchwork. Yeah, do you know how big this game is? I mean, patchwork is huge. Patchwork is not only so like crazy, but it's like number one or two on both family, on the geek and on abstract on the geek. It's it's you. Rosa Berg's little abstract, which reminds me of Tetris in a way you're building the quilt with with the different shapes and stuff. But just because of the theme, you know, my, you know, my thought is, you know, I'm going to say that this is a game that, and it's a two player game, here's a game that the more advanced ages, shall we say? I don't know. 40 plus maybe even is sort of tailor made for them. I think because you're making these beautiful quilts. Now, the game obviously is hitting everybody who likes games and likes light abstracts. The app just came out. So I think is doing it well. But I think it was interesting that that he chose a theme like this that's unusual and then puts kind of a normal sort of feel to the game makes it intuitive. But it's, I mean, it's a beautiful little game. I think it's, yeah, I think I have not played that one. Oh, you got it. I know there's an app for it. Yeah, just came out. Yeah, the app just came out. But yeah, I, you know, I think the theme in that fits nicely with the experience and the target audience, you know, that they're aiming for the casual family gamer. And it's not, you know, it's, it's something that everybody can, you know, jump in and enjoy. It's certainly going to be, it's certainly family friendly or. So yeah, I think that they're, they're, they're, he's looking at a very light audience in terms of target. Yes. And in contrast, the, the third one here is power grid. Oh, I'll say in contrast. Wow, does that gain, give me a headache? I mean, you know, but, but I'm sure for you, the math involved, you just probably, and I have friends, they just look at it and they know exactly how much they need at the end of their old turn to be able to build the connections they want. Because that's sort of the key to making your turn the best turn, right? You've got to sort of figure out how much can you, uh, certainly a lot about planning and figuring out what you're going to do. How much you're going to auction off. Yeah. Yeah, how much money you want to hold on to and all that stuff. I have enough money to do those connections. So I think, again, a brilliant design. I do enjoy playing it. I just don't do that kind of work. So I don't do very well in it. But I do like the experience because it's, it's a strong theme. And I think it's for being target audience. Certainly a gamer's game, I think. There's so many different ways to play and different maps and everything else. And, um, I don't know if you put an age on that. I mean, I've seen certainly, I don't know, I've seen 13 year olds play power grid like masters and, and I've seen 60 year olds do it. So I think it's more, that's one of those games that's more by the, the way to the game and the gamer. Yeah, I, I tend to agree with you. And I think power grid's kind of an interesting case because it's sort of, I once they broken out into the mainstream, but it certainly is one of those games that you, you know, you'll always see gaming playing. And when people first get into gaming, they get introduced to it, but it's really on a heavier side of the scale. Um, so it's, it's got an interesting kind of a target for it that it's, it's both kind of heavy and light at the same time. Yep, yep, I agree. Question number five, whoo, a tough one, Jeff. We have to answer this question based on one of our designs. So. I'm going to ask you first, what makes this game different from other games on the market? Pick any game you've designed it. Well, I'll start with the first one we did, Aries Project. I haven't talked about that one today. And, um, you know, it's, it's, that was different because, you know, we were trying to replicate the, the hidden, you know, the hidden information aspects of computer real-time strategy games that you didn't know what the other guy was building. And, you know, so it rewarded scouting and, and outguessing the other, the opponent didn't really kind of emphasize that the hidden nature of, of the game. So that's, um, that's what, uh, that, that's, that's the big thing that's, that's separated it from the other games that were out. And it did accomplish its goal. I mean, that was the fun of that game. It is the fun of that game, shouldn't say it was, obviously, but it's just fun to game. To look on your opponent's face when you're with God and it's like, oh, I've got to all of these guys and I've switched over to bombers. So, so sorry. Well, for me, there's only one choice to answer this question. I could try with a lot of my games, but there's only one that, that really is easy. And that's baseball highlights 2045. And, you know, what was I trying to do at the beginning? God only knows. I, I was trying to do a baseball, I really, the game took five years. It went through so many permutations. I was trying to do a deck builder with a baseball thing. And as I got into it more and more, I kept saying, you know, maybe I should have, I should do a game that really has a lot of baseball feel that would appeal to non baseball fans and baseball fans, you know, just to gamers as well. And you know, that's a, yeah, that's a pretty hard thing to do, I think, at least from whatever he told me, which is why I stuck at it so long. And I don't know how successful I am at it. All I know is that it's different. It's different from any other game you'll ever play. It's because it's, it doesn't follow baseball very much, but you will feel like you're playing baseball. And I think it's a pretty good competitive interactive deck builder. So of all my designs, I think it's the easiest one to say is different from other games, much harder on some other designs. Okay. Question number six. It's kind of a gimme, but I'll throw this out here. But when, when would you, when do you like to, to ask these types of questions during your design? Well, you know, for me, it's not so much a gimme because, um, I don't, for instance, I don't like to do it early in the design. I do not. So for me, I'm going to sit down and play and play and play until I have something that's fun that I, that I think is fun. Now, of course, we talked about the fun of design. It can end up being somewhere entirely different by the time I get there. I do look at it, um, middle and late a lot. This kind of, these kind of questions, because when I get to middle is when I'm first going to start showing it to other players, and I really want to start honing in on sort of what I'm trying to communicate. But early, especially, I don't. I just play and play and I have, I have stuff that's still in the closet because through that playing and changing things around, and never had anything I really liked enough. So, so for me, it's middle, especially and, and a lot late as well. Um, yeah, I, I think it's, you know, throughout the design. I always have some of these questions in the back of my mind. But certainly some of the later ones that we're going to get into around production, I'm not worrying about that at this point, you know, I, but, um, you know, certainly you don't want to design a mechanic that's going to be really tough for people to learn and stuff like that. And, and things will change as you go, as you change your, maybe you change your target audience or you change the experience a little bit and we've touched a little bit on how that happens. But, you know, I think it's, certainly when you make major changes or if you're going to like do a major play testing run, if you go to convention or something, you know, it's, it's, I like to look at it after that and say, okay, let's go back and take a look at this, how the play testing went in light of all these various questions and see if that, you know, gives me some indication, helps me figure out why this was successful and this was not successful or was successful with this group and not successful with this group. It's probably good time to throw in one quick tip that is connected with this, which is when you're going to play tests, I think it's pretty important to at least when you're going into it to have just one or two of them. these questions that are paramount. For instance, you have a goal with a play test, and you want to see some specific things out of it. I find that so helpful. I heard that from Ignacy Travichek the first time. And I thought to myself, that's really good, 'cause sometimes I would just sort of play test, okay, what do you like about what you're not like? But he was saying go in with a real precise question. Now, from that, you'll get all kinds of things, but at least you start with something that you're gonna try to observe and could help your game. And I think that's an excellent point. - Yeah, yeah, I do think it's good advice. All right, we get to the toughest of the Lutilogical Edgy Rat Question's always. And that is question number seven. - Okay. - What are you usually doing, Jeff, when you're listening to Ludology? - Well, I rarely actually listen to the podcast once it comes out after saying, 'cause I do the editing. - Oh, certainly, here again. - I listen to it, I record it, which we're doing right now. And then I listen to it all the way through while I'm kind of editing and making sure that everything is cleaned up, especially before I pass it over to our Mastering Master, Mr. Gilhova. - He'll hold it, yeah, I see. - But I very rarely will go back and listen to it a third time. - Well, let's just say, okay, then for you, let's just-- - Podcasts in general, I listen to, most of them I listen to in the car on the way up and back from work during my commute. - That seems to be very popular, doesn't it? And a lot of people I talk to, that's what they do. I'm just trying to figure out how to do that. What I normally do now with the Dology and other podcasts is I'm eating almonds, I love almonds. And I'm designing usually at the same time because I'm working on a game and I think, and a lot of these podcasts, some little Pearl O'Wiznan will come out. And I'll say to myself, yeah, of course. And I'll help the podcast will help me design. But I do want to listen more in the car. So for those of us who don't know how to do that, and I may be the only one, is the best way this Bluetooth on your phone kind of thing? Is that the-- - I mean, there's a couple of different, that's probably the easiest one since it's set up. It's easiest because you don't have to plug in any cables or something. Your phone should just automatically connect to the car stereo, but it depends on the make of the car and how recent it is and stuff like that. But otherwise, you can maybe just get a cable to go from your headphone jack into an auxiliary jack. - Oh, that's cool too. I got it now. And then you run it from your phone, but it's gonna come through the whole car. - Right, or if you got an incredibly old car, you could get one of those cassette tape adapters. - Wow. - You remember those? - I vaguely. - You used to plug your Walkman or something into the cassette tape adapter and stick that into your cassette player, and it would play the music for you in an incredibly low fidelity way. - I vaguely remember that. (laughing) - Okay, well, that brings us to the end of another episode of "Ludology." I hope that you guys are enjoying and getting finding this checklist useful. Again, this is something that Mike and I are really using and go through to look at our games. So we hope that you will get some utility out of it as well. - Yeah, it's good stuff. - In some upcoming episodes, we'll be going over the second and third parts. And as I said, we'll be posting this up online. Before we go, we'd like to thank our benefactors for this episode, Tom Cohen, Vittorio in Sagna, and William McDuff. Thank you, folks, for supporting the show. If you would like to help us out, please go to patreon.com/ludology or to our website, "Ludology.net" and click on the donate button. So we will be back in two weeks with a new episode of "Ludology." - See you next time. - Thanks for listening. "Ludology" is made possible by the support and donations of listeners like you. We encourage you to visit us at ludology.net to get involved in a continuing discussion on today's topic. "Ludology" is a member of the Dice Tower Network, the premier board game media network. Explore all the shows we have to offer at dicetowernetwork.com. Until next time, keep thinking, keep learning, and keep playing. (upbeat music)