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Speaker 1: Hey, this is Annie, and you're listening to stuff I've

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Speaker 1: never told you. Today, we have a bonus interview for you,

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Speaker 1: continuing our conversation around women in tabletop games in the

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Speaker 1: world of tabletop game development. We recorded it a little

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Speaker 1: while ago, so this is like a collision of Past

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Speaker 1: Annie and President Annie. I hope it doesn't mess with

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Speaker 1: the spacetime continuum. But let's jump right in to the

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Speaker 1: past and to the interview. So we're here today to

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Speaker 1: talk more about women in tabletop gaming and specifically developers

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Speaker 1: in tabletop gaming. And we're here with not one but

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Speaker 1: two Heathers. Hello, there's Can you introduce yourselves and tell

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Speaker 1: us a little bit about what you what you do. Sure,

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Speaker 1: I'm Heterodeal CEO of Ninth Level Games, which sounds work

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Speaker 1: for what it is, but but yeah, I'm a game

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Speaker 1: designer and also do a lot of the bigness end

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Speaker 1: of the work for our publishing company. And I am

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Speaker 1: Heather Wilson. I am c o O of Ninth Level Games,

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Speaker 1: and I do some design work, um and I also

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Speaker 1: do a lot of editing, and um I did to

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Speaker 1: write our contracts, which some people find very boring but

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Speaker 1: I found very exciting. Oh, I have so into contracts.

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Speaker 1: I actually will. I will dive into why it is

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Speaker 1: that at Universal Orlando you can go to like Spider

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Speaker 1: Man and the Hulk, even though Disney owns them, but

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Speaker 1: you can't in California. It's all about contracts. So I

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Speaker 1: am like on board with you with how interesting that is. UM,

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Speaker 1: and you both have been involved in developing some games,

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Speaker 1: some pretty rad games, some games that I'm a fan of. UM,

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Speaker 1: would you mind talking about some of the ones that

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Speaker 1: some of the games that you have developed. Sure? Obviously,

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Speaker 1: I think that the one that is probably our collaboration,

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Speaker 1: which was shorting your text, came out in early two

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Speaker 1: dozen sixteen, after a successful kickstarter in late fifteen, or

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Speaker 1: it's a really sixteen, Um, it's for so many years now.

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Speaker 1: But it was really funny because up until that point,

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Speaker 1: I think at all about this other. But for me,

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Speaker 1: I I didn't think I would make a game. I

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Speaker 1: did a lot of like now, body as off me,

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Speaker 1: let me tell you what I think is good, let

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Speaker 1: me do this, let me protest it. But I didn't

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Speaker 1: think I would make a game. And then we kind

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Speaker 1: of had this calm that in the I to work

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Speaker 1: as well, I think we could probably be, you know,

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Speaker 1: and then our other partner of Clip who's my husband,

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Speaker 1: who was already doing from RPP design, was like, yeah,

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Speaker 1: let's do it, right Heather, Yeah, I mean that's pretty

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Speaker 1: much exactly it. Like, we were playing sort of a

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Speaker 1: prototype of Shortinger's Chats and we thought it'd be fun

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Speaker 1: to just put it out there. And it really changed

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Speaker 1: the direction of the company when we did that, because

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Speaker 1: you know, before that, we had really only put out

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Speaker 1: role playing games, and so to find this card game

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Speaker 1: that we were super into and be like, yeah, let's

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Speaker 1: give this a shot, and then it did really well

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Speaker 1: on Kickstarter and it continues to sell really well, and

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Speaker 1: so it allowed us to sort of feel like we

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Speaker 1: had the freedom to make more games that we wanted

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Speaker 1: to make, and so that's what we've been doing and

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Speaker 1: having a really good time doing it. So it sounds

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Speaker 1: like a and neither of you ever expected you would

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Speaker 1: get into this, because my next question was going to be,

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Speaker 1: did you ever think that you would be in the

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Speaker 1: development process of tabletop gaming? You have a view might

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Speaker 1: have I definitely did not even consider until probably around

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Speaker 1: two thousand thirteen, never even thought about it. I definitely.

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Speaker 1: Like I had had some thoughts about it. I'd gone

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Speaker 1: to some conventions and people were like, making games easy,

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Speaker 1: You should just make a game. Now. First of all,

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Speaker 1: that's not true. Making this is not easy, but they

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Speaker 1: were right in that, you know, it was a lot

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Speaker 1: of fun and I love making stuff like Heather kind

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Speaker 1: of test to what my office looks like. It's just

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Speaker 1: like an exclusion of crafts materials and books and papers,

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Speaker 1: and it just hadn't occurred to me. But now that

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Speaker 1: I'm doing it, it's all that I want to do.

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Speaker 1: Like I've always when I was a kid, I'm like,

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Speaker 1: I'm gonna be a writer when I grow up. And

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Speaker 1: I realized that I don't want to tell specific stories.

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Speaker 1: What I want to do is help other people tell stories.

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Speaker 1: And that makes me like really happy and excited. Yeah, yeah,

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Speaker 1: I love that. UM. As someone who is a big

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Speaker 1: tabletop gaming fan and recently into your Dungeons and Dragons,

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Speaker 1: I do think it is a very fun and beneficial

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Speaker 1: way for people to to tell stories. And I would

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Speaker 1: love if you could both speak to what does the

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Speaker 1: process entail, like what goes into making a game. This

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Speaker 1: is gonna be a long point. There's gonna be a

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Speaker 1: long answer. Good. Um, yeah, because it's not. I don't

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Speaker 1: feel that it's freight forward for every game. It's not

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Speaker 1: step one, room fifteen, and you have big your game's

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Speaker 1: always done. Um of some milestone points I would say

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Speaker 1: that you can touch on, but I feel like they're

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Speaker 1: all different depending on the level of games. Also, we

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Speaker 1: might be used to this situation, but we have I

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Speaker 1: would say, three key plock lines, one of which is

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Speaker 1: RPG products, one of which is organ card games, and

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Speaker 1: one of which is as we call other strainness. It's

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Speaker 1: just weird stuff that we just want to put out. So, um,

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Speaker 1: each one of them has a different life cycle. I

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Speaker 1: was just gonna say real quick, with the three things

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Speaker 1: I'm thinking of it, you know idea. Look that's perfectly

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Speaker 1: for you know, one to one month to six years.

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Speaker 1: So everything that ends up taking start with an initial

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Speaker 1: design concept, get a rough discussion going about that, play

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Speaker 1: test its possibly start getting some you know, concrete ideas

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Speaker 1: written down, get some art, real lay testing, go from there.

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Speaker 1: That would probably be the main line, but it never

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Speaker 1: goes liar. Yeah, whether we we tend to go back

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Speaker 1: and forth. So we'll we'll start with an idea, and

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Speaker 1: sometimes that idea immediately leads to prototype. Sometimes it takes

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Speaker 1: more back and forth, and then we'll we'll do a

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Speaker 1: lot of testing. Normally in our like in all of

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Speaker 1: our product lines, we talked to each other before we

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Speaker 1: put games in front of anyone else. But then after

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Speaker 1: we've sort of like all three of us have looked

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Speaker 1: at it and gotten a feel for what we want

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Speaker 1: to do, we will bring games to conventions, um will

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Speaker 1: play them with our friends and UM something we've done

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Speaker 1: in the past and we're going to move back into

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Speaker 1: in the next coming years is will get a game

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Speaker 1: to a point where it feels pretty good, but it's

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Speaker 1: not quite ready to, you know, put in stores, and

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Speaker 1: we'll make Ashcan versions and we'll sell those at conventions

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Speaker 1: and online so that people who are fans of what

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Speaker 1: we do can can play that game early, they can

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Speaker 1: sort of offer us feedback. And a lot of times

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Speaker 1: when we're doing in Hashtan edition, UM is because we

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Speaker 1: haven't quite nailed down either the aesthetic that we want

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Speaker 1: or there's something we think is missing in the design,

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Speaker 1: but we know the game is already fun, so we

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Speaker 1: want to sort of get it out there into the

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Speaker 1: market and see what people think. UM, And then with

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Speaker 1: our RPGs, UM, we are just now moving into a

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Speaker 1: whole new system that Chris has designed, and we're really

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Speaker 1: really excited to get those out the door because it's

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Speaker 1: something like the system, something he's been working on for years,

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Speaker 1: and UM one of the titles will come out initially

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Speaker 1: with that system. The Excellence is something I've been working

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Speaker 1: on for a couple of years. So it takes a while,

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Speaker 1: but the more games we make, the faster the process is.

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Speaker 1: Right and as you could probably imagine, UM, role playing games,

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Speaker 1: the lead up is so much longer than than a

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Speaker 1: carter board game. That's longer in the playtesting and the

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Speaker 1: development by but just getting the core concept sound if

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Speaker 1: you can be able to get it to a playable

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Speaker 1: point right takes longer for role playing. So I would

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Speaker 1: say most of the role playing products are somewhere between

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Speaker 1: probably two to four years so we actually get them

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Speaker 1: out there. We did as a kind of an expected

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Speaker 1: one last year called The Try the Middle School, which

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Speaker 1: is an anthology of RPG storytelling and archetype game that

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Speaker 1: we had how many designers fifteen other designers I think

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Speaker 1: it was, Yeah, Yeah, it's like fifteen sixteen, So luckily

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Speaker 1: we didn't have to design them all, but we did

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Speaker 1: a good number of them to collaborate with people, which

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Speaker 1: is a lot of a lot of people to coordinate

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Speaker 1: and other Is that very well? Um? But that even

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Speaker 1: that for being us years to come the solution from

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Speaker 1: idea to published and now it's like out for sale,

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Speaker 1: you know. So yeah, yeah, it was really fast for us. Um.

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Speaker 1: I'm going to assume that both of you are players

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Speaker 1: of table of Talk games. Yes, yes, m hm. How

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Speaker 1: did you get into it? Well? I always like your

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Speaker 1: traditional board games, right, you know, card games, that kind

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Speaker 1: of stuff in the games and things like that. And

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Speaker 1: some of my friends when I was maybe like eighth

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Speaker 1: ninth grade, we're getting at magic and they told me

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Speaker 1: about it, and I was like, I wanted to get that,

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Speaker 1: so I kind of just kind of put su the

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Speaker 1: side and they didn't care it was a fourth person,

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Speaker 1: so I think I didn't really care about it. But

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Speaker 1: then as I got a little bit older, I actually

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Speaker 1: met Chris when I was about eight teams and his

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Speaker 1: whole family played games and my family didn do that.

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Speaker 1: So I was like, oh, what's this that's breaking out?

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Speaker 1: You know, risk could I breaking out, you know if

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Speaker 1: even if it was just m you know, cards or something,

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Speaker 1: it's I just was craving that to do this is

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Speaker 1: so much fun with this, And that was right around

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Speaker 1: I don't think it was definite when that was Katon

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Speaker 1: came out and dressed, but it was a little bit

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Speaker 1: after that. So that was my gateway game. It kept

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Speaker 1: me so um that I started playing that kind of thing,

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Speaker 1: and I really wasn't in the role playing or anything

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Speaker 1: at all. And I would say I'd probably only been

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Speaker 1: whole into storytelling and that kind of thing for them

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Speaker 1: maybe the past five or those years. I'm definitely more

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Speaker 1: an analytical place to speak a person or the board games.

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Speaker 1: But Heather meant his all this earlier, and I just

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Speaker 1: want to tuch on this real quick before we forget

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Speaker 1: about it. Um. You were saying your creativity, you just

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Speaker 1: want to make games, and I'm fine that with myself too.

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Speaker 1: The things I used to want to do, like do

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Speaker 1: a craft or watch a movie or read a book

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Speaker 1: with almost what's the game? Now that's like, it's just

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Speaker 1: something else so fun, And I didn't realize that I,

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Speaker 1: you know, whenever fifteen or sixteen or you know, a

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Speaker 1: little kid like whatever. You know, they're fun. But when

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Speaker 1: I got older and we got into it, oh yeah,

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Speaker 1: this is what I wanted to GI. Yeah. So for me,

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Speaker 1: I have grown up around games, like I remember my

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Speaker 1: grandfather and my uncle playing D and D together when

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Speaker 1: I was in first grade, and when I would stay

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Speaker 1: with my dad, we would always play games together, like

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Speaker 1: he would play Mastermind with me, and I have to say,

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Speaker 1: I really appreciate the fact that, like he would play

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Speaker 1: that game over and over with a small child, so

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Speaker 1: pop of but I you know, I sort of fell

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Speaker 1: away from it as I got into middle school and

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Speaker 1: high school. And then when I was in college, I

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Speaker 1: was just looking for something to do and there was

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Speaker 1: this Lord of the Rings card game. I was like,

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Speaker 1: I'll try that, and then I tried the Magic card

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Speaker 1: game and I was like, oh okay, and it just

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Speaker 1: sort of went from there. And after college, I ended

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Speaker 1: up working in a comic book in gaming store in Connecticut,

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Speaker 1: and through that I started larning and doing more tabletop

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Speaker 1: stuff and starting to go to conventions, and so it

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Speaker 1: all just sort of snowballed into doing this. Now, can

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Speaker 1: I ask um? Going off of that, I read a

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Speaker 1: lot of accounts of people of women specifically, who would

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Speaker 1: go into gaming stories of comic with stories and would

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Speaker 1: kind of be asked, oh, your boyfriend likes these games,

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Speaker 1: assuming that there they couldn't possibly be there because they

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Speaker 1: wanted to be there. If if you were working in

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Speaker 1: this complic store, did you ever experienced something like that

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Speaker 1: on on the other side of like people coming in

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Speaker 1: and assuming you didn't know what you were talking about.

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Speaker 1: You know, strangely I didn't like I as I look

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Speaker 1: back on it now, I had a very unique experience

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Speaker 1: because the store at the time I worked for it

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Speaker 1: was owned by two dudes, one who had owned it

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Speaker 1: by himself and then UM ended up looking for a

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Speaker 1: business partner, and one of his partners was actually a

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Speaker 1: full time nurse. UM, so that nurse came in and

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Speaker 1: sort of like, I think he's the one who made

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Speaker 1: it a bit more welcoming. But you know, I walked

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Speaker 1: in the door, and from the first I felt really

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Speaker 1: at home there. And then as I was behind the counter,

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Speaker 1: generally mo people took what I said at face value.

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Speaker 1: I think maybe there were one or two times where

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Speaker 1: someone asked me a comic book question and just kind

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Speaker 1: of like dismissed my answer. But other than that, it

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Speaker 1: was just a shockingly supportive environment and um, I had

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Speaker 1: a great time working there. Yeah. The other A want

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Speaker 1: of piggyback on this on your question because as an

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Speaker 1: actual girlfriend as a gamer in my low twenties, Okay, Um,

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Speaker 1: everybody assumed, especially when if we were to a game store,

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Speaker 1: what a really people were like, what wow, why they're

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Speaker 1: a girl? Even in the school store, like that would

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Speaker 1: happen every time we went into a game store, magic toornament,

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Speaker 1: anything like that. But if we ever were talking about

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Speaker 1: games or a convention or at a game store, nobody

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Speaker 1: assumed that I would know anything about it, right, They

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Speaker 1: would assume I was just digging along. Um. Luckily, I've

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Speaker 1: kind of always been a one of the boys out

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Speaker 1: of forty kind of person, So I was just going

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Speaker 1: to work, go right back at you like, actually, no,

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Speaker 1: it's just the whole thing. But it definitely happened, and

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Speaker 1: that was kind of my first experiences with it, and

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Speaker 1: then I wasn't until I want to say, yeah, about

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Speaker 1: ten years ago maybe an eight was my first convention

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Speaker 1: that I ever went to, So I didn't actually little

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Speaker 1: convention until it already deal with a lot of those

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Speaker 1: situations and you know, surprisingly, what's funnier. I was about

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Speaker 1: the comment on this content is I think you're experience

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Speaker 1: the game store like that's like the best experience, and

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Speaker 1: then you look at something that's two thousand eighteen, and

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Speaker 1: some of these experiences in two thousand eighteen have not

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Speaker 1: been so good, and it's like what is a second? Yeah?

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Speaker 1: What the heck? Yeah? Yeah, like why why are we reverting?

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Speaker 1: You know? Yeah? By now it's crazy. We've been going

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Speaker 1: to convention. Well I've been doing on my osense, so

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Speaker 1: and I but we've been going at levels about thousand

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Speaker 1: and thirteen, including how they're I mean that's about when

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Speaker 1: we got involved. Um. And then obviously you have a hum,

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Speaker 1: we're probably going before two thousand and nine on your own. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: it's a consumer, but I would say from on, you know,

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Speaker 1: you're playing the game, you're working at boos, you're running

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Speaker 1: an event, those kind of things, you're having a meeting

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Speaker 1: or something, um. Not all the time. Back then would

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Speaker 1: everything be oh, great, we totally you're a game designer. Awesome.

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Speaker 1: It wouldn't be like that. But I feel like likes

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Speaker 1: just gotten really big on last five years, and there

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Speaker 1: are a lot of people, a lot more people involved.

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Speaker 1: And I don't know if some of these guys are

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Speaker 1: like you taking my hobby away, because it feels like that,

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Speaker 1: but I feel like you're there a little more of

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Speaker 1: a threatening vibe. Threatened vibe I mean from the gaming community.

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Speaker 1: Not everybody, but some of the established people where Just

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Speaker 1: this summer at the Origin, there were many events, including

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Speaker 1: things or Heather I had a talk afterwards, like what

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Speaker 1: do have to happen? You know, this guy's explained the

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Speaker 1: game around or this that my game great? You know.

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Speaker 1: Um this year especially, I I was surprised how um,

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Speaker 1: how different it was at some of the same conventions

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Speaker 1: maybe going through for a while. Yeah, I I super

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Speaker 1: agree with what Heather said, Like it's just weird. Like

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Speaker 1: four years I've been going to cons and I've rarely

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Speaker 1: had issues, and then this past year it's just been

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Speaker 1: like what is happening? Like suddenly there are people who

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Speaker 1: forget that, like it's not okay to touch strangers and

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Speaker 1: stuff like that, And I'm just so surprised. And every

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Speaker 1: time that I get into a situation like that, I'm

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Speaker 1: always surprised because I have this expectation of people in

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Speaker 1: the table top world, that they're gonna be nice and cool, unrespectful,

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Speaker 1: because that's what you know, the closest gamers around me are.

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Speaker 1: And so when I encounter that that situation where they're not,

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Speaker 1: it's not only is it frustrating because the situation is bad,

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Speaker 1: but it's frustrating because I expect better. Yeah, it's interesting

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Speaker 1: that you you say that I've never been to a

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Speaker 1: tabletop convention like gen Con or something, but I have been.

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Speaker 1: I've researched a lot about it for this episode, and um,

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Speaker 1: it's interesting that you say that it feels like it's

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Speaker 1: gotten worse. I was talking to Tracy on the previous

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Speaker 1: episode to this one about just playing tabletop games, and

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Speaker 1: we both discussed how we had this kind of internalized

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Speaker 1: misogyny that made us think that we weren't meant for

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Speaker 1: this world, like this was not our realm, and for

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Speaker 1: me specifically, like I remember the first time someone a guy,

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Speaker 1: was like, do you play D and D? And I

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Speaker 1: had a reaction that was like, oh no, no, and

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Speaker 1: now I play it and I love it. I love it,

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Speaker 1: but I it was just like a knee jerk, Oh

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Speaker 1: god no. Um, and I kind of see that. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: I guess I was kind of like that one because

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Speaker 1: when I first met my husband and his friends were

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Speaker 1: not only the tabletop gamers, but they were also a

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Speaker 1: role players and also a lot of the extended crew

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Speaker 1: was I was definitely like, I don't I didn't know

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Speaker 1: really what it was. But I also kind of like, okay,

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Speaker 1: this is where I draw the line. I did do

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Speaker 1: that back then, for sure, that definitely happened, and now

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Speaker 1: I'm kind of like, what are we doing? You know,

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Speaker 1: we're still in the plank. I'll try it, you know. Yeah.

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Speaker 1: I for me, it was very much I thought, and

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Speaker 1: I'm almost ashamed to admit it now, but I thought

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Speaker 1: it was too complicated to for me like there's too

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Speaker 1: much involved in D and D like I'm a nerd.

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Speaker 1: I was never like that student nerdy. It was that

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Speaker 1: is too complicated. And now that I've played it, I

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Speaker 1: it makes me angry that for so long I was

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Speaker 1: deterred from this thing that has been very beneficial and

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Speaker 1: helpful then like a social activity for me, because I

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Speaker 1: was intimidated by it. And to this day, even if

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Speaker 1: I've had a wonderful experience, like it sounds like the

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Speaker 1: both of you have in general had a good experience. Yeah, yeahfinitely,

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Speaker 1: so have I. But I still feel intimidated when I

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Speaker 1: see there's an event in town where they have um

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Speaker 1: every other Monday, they have like d NT and it's

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Speaker 1: one of those like, you know, an hour long here's

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Speaker 1: your character type thing and you show up with strangers,

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Speaker 1: and I'm afraid to do it because I'm afraid I

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Speaker 1: will encounter basically misogyny, right right, yeah, yeah, And I

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Speaker 1: thank you, you know, And the shame of it is,

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Speaker 1: and I know many people in the in this world

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Speaker 1: gaming world that have said this before. It's okay, we

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Speaker 1: gotta go out there. And you know a lot of

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Speaker 1: women have said, Okay, I'm gonna go out there. I'm

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Speaker 1: gonna have fun. You know. Unfortunately this bad thing happened

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Speaker 1: last time, but I'm gonna keep going back out there,

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Speaker 1: and they do. You know, the shame of it is,

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Speaker 1: you know, especially what you were saying, You're going to

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Speaker 1: go to a thing you've never gone to before, You're

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Speaker 1: gonna try something new, like that's scary enough, and then

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Speaker 1: the idea that you're going to go out and potentially

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Speaker 1: get these horror stories that you've heard about. I'm sure

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Speaker 1: enough the only person. That's probably come of people that

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Speaker 1: would go and do this, but they just won't because

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Speaker 1: of of the connotation and the shame of it. Is

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Speaker 1: same for for even board games, like you walk into

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Speaker 1: a or match tournament, you walk to do a room,

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Speaker 1: it's gonna be like eight five percent guys, maybe more,

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Speaker 1: you know what I mean. So you're gonna go in

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Speaker 1: there and it's gonna be a little bit intimidating probably,

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Speaker 1: which is sad. It shouldn't be. Um, there's individual people

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Speaker 1: might not be intimidating, but there is just this um

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Speaker 1: overarching intimidation, and I think that's why a lot of

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Speaker 1: movement designers and even UH players kind of have this

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Speaker 1: imposter syndrome. Was like, well, I'm not sure, I'm not.

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Speaker 1: That's like, no, now, you're just as good as these guys.

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Speaker 1: It's just there's only six of us and there's eight

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Speaker 1: hundreds of them, you know. So we've been dealing with

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Speaker 1: this a lot recently that wouldn't would you say, in

385
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Speaker 1: the last about five years, is just started kind of

386
00:23:45,160 --> 00:23:47,920
Speaker 1: coming to a head for a lot of players. Yeah, yeah,

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Speaker 1: I would think. So, yeah, I would say, I've got

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Speaker 1: to notice gating more and more as more women into

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Speaker 1: the gaming world. Especially we're seeing it any conventions and

390
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Speaker 1: things like that, not as much small, local, local thing.

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Speaker 1: So I mean, I'm happy to report that from when

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Speaker 1: we started doing this and now I see so many

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Speaker 1: more women out conventions and we're playing and having a

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Speaker 1: good time and running companies. So it's happening, and it's

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Speaker 1: sorely which surely getting there, right, It's it's gonna be

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Speaker 1: a long time for that connotation I think to go away, yeah,

397
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Speaker 1: And but I think it will get there. Like I

398
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Speaker 1: think that as more women get involved and as we

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Speaker 1: just talk about our involvement, that makes a huge difference

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Speaker 1: to the community, just like being sort of open about

401
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Speaker 1: the fact that like, yeah, I played d India every

402
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Speaker 1: week and you know, here's what I like about my character,

403
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Speaker 1: or you know, have you played this game and I

404
00:24:47,359 --> 00:24:50,440
Speaker 1: think you would like that. Like social media is a

405
00:24:50,640 --> 00:24:55,840
Speaker 1: great place to sort of make those connections and help

406
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Speaker 1: bring that about. And I think that for a while

407
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Speaker 1: people were just sort of letting the loudest voice in

408
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Speaker 1: the room be the one that was listened to. And

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Speaker 1: as we you know, as we deal with horrible stuff

410
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Speaker 1: in real life, I think more people are coming to

411
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Speaker 1: realize that, like, I don't have to let that happen.

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Speaker 1: I don't have to let the loudest voice in the

413
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Speaker 1: room be the only voice. Like if I like games,

414
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Speaker 1: I want to play games, I'm going to go into

415
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Speaker 1: those spaces. And it might be anxious about it, but

416
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Speaker 1: I belong just as much as anyone else. Anything that's

417
00:25:32,800 --> 00:25:36,960
Speaker 1: really valuable and important. Oh I agree. Um. We touched

418
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Speaker 1: on in our last episode. Playing tabletop games has measurable

419
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Speaker 1: physical and mental benefits. It's good for you, uh, and

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Speaker 1: it's not for everybody. I'm not saying like, uh, this

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Speaker 1: is a wonderful thing for everyone, but in general, and

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Speaker 1: this is a big point I tried to drive home

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Speaker 1: in my the last episode we did is I have

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Speaker 1: friends who for a long time told me they hated

425
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Speaker 1: playing board games and tabletop games. And there's so much

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Speaker 1: out there, and so eventually I convinced them, let's try

427
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Speaker 1: these other games. Because what they didn't like about them

428
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Speaker 1: was that they were competitive. But there are games where

429
00:26:23,880 --> 00:26:25,960
Speaker 1: you don't have to be competitive, or it's competitive in

430
00:26:26,000 --> 00:26:28,320
Speaker 1: a different way, or you're playing against the game itself

431
00:26:28,400 --> 00:26:31,640
Speaker 1: and instead of instead of playing against each other. Um.

432
00:26:32,720 --> 00:26:36,840
Speaker 1: And they have since come around and they love certain games.

433
00:26:36,880 --> 00:26:43,560
Speaker 1: I've introduced them to Dixit, especially, um they love dix It.

434
00:26:44,320 --> 00:26:48,320
Speaker 1: But the point being, there's so much room for creativity.

435
00:26:48,480 --> 00:26:52,119
Speaker 1: There's so many different games out there that I feel

436
00:26:52,240 --> 00:26:55,680
Speaker 1: like when we think of tabletop gaming, we're thinking of

437
00:26:55,840 --> 00:26:59,040
Speaker 1: like Clue, which is wonderful. I love Clue, but yeah,

438
00:26:59,200 --> 00:27:01,919
Speaker 1: you know, like those big games, but there's so much

439
00:27:01,960 --> 00:27:05,120
Speaker 1: out there, and they're so sartatistic and creative, and there's

440
00:27:05,240 --> 00:27:09,800
Speaker 1: so many different mechanisms out there. Yeah, and I do

441
00:27:09,960 --> 00:27:13,720
Speaker 1: think you know the one, uh, the one that isn't

442
00:27:13,760 --> 00:27:18,120
Speaker 1: the hurdle. It's starting now a little bit for game

443
00:27:18,160 --> 00:27:21,440
Speaker 1: designers that aren't making those huge epic you know six

444
00:27:21,520 --> 00:27:24,119
Speaker 1: our board games is you know, you're kind of in

445
00:27:24,200 --> 00:27:27,320
Speaker 1: competition with the board game get type crowd people that

446
00:27:27,400 --> 00:27:31,240
Speaker 1: are like that's that's a good game versus fix It,

447
00:27:31,520 --> 00:27:33,880
Speaker 1: which is a good game and it's a fun game. Um.

448
00:27:34,280 --> 00:27:37,680
Speaker 1: Or you know another late game that's out that's very

449
00:27:37,760 --> 00:27:41,040
Speaker 1: popular right now is Pdominant or petch work. For all

450
00:27:41,080 --> 00:27:43,720
Speaker 1: these games that are kind of late and ribasious, they're

451
00:27:43,760 --> 00:27:46,600
Speaker 1: done in less than thirty minutes. They're so good games.

452
00:27:47,160 --> 00:27:49,000
Speaker 1: They're the kind of games and bring out more often

453
00:27:49,080 --> 00:27:51,119
Speaker 1: because more people can play them, you can get them

454
00:27:51,160 --> 00:27:53,640
Speaker 1: done quicker. And that's the kind of games we make

455
00:27:53,840 --> 00:27:58,040
Speaker 1: to the later fun good mechanisms. But it's not going

456
00:27:58,160 --> 00:28:01,520
Speaker 1: to take you six hour to play, very like something

457
00:28:01,600 --> 00:28:04,040
Speaker 1: you could teach you fam remembers what your said. So

458
00:28:04,280 --> 00:28:06,960
Speaker 1: it's one of these things where I mean I sometimes

459
00:28:07,000 --> 00:28:09,080
Speaker 1: feel like the game I just made, I was like,

460
00:28:09,200 --> 00:28:11,480
Speaker 1: I don't know if this is like a good enough

461
00:28:11,560 --> 00:28:13,639
Speaker 1: game like that, and it's like it is. It's just

462
00:28:14,000 --> 00:28:18,400
Speaker 1: not gloom Haven level of complexity scan and it doesn't

463
00:28:18,440 --> 00:28:22,000
Speaker 1: need to be so um, you know. Struggling with that

464
00:28:22,240 --> 00:28:24,480
Speaker 1: hurdle is like the next thing I'm picking up. Before

465
00:28:24,560 --> 00:28:26,520
Speaker 1: we were like cooling met a game, and now we're like, okay,

466
00:28:27,040 --> 00:28:33,840
Speaker 1: we make games. We made a game a little different. Yeah, yeah,

467
00:28:34,080 --> 00:28:38,720
Speaker 1: And like I superget that, like because I too feel

468
00:28:38,800 --> 00:28:41,320
Speaker 1: like it's a game is going to if I need

469
00:28:41,360 --> 00:28:44,800
Speaker 1: to sit down at a board for an hour or longer,

470
00:28:45,280 --> 00:28:47,680
Speaker 1: I'm probably not going to be able to play that

471
00:28:47,800 --> 00:28:51,520
Speaker 1: game because I just it's too much energy and I'm

472
00:28:51,520 --> 00:28:53,120
Speaker 1: too much like, oh, I want to do a different thing,

473
00:28:53,240 --> 00:28:57,800
Speaker 1: but I'll play like five to ten shorter games all

474
00:28:57,880 --> 00:29:01,000
Speaker 1: in a row. Just because it's like get for and exciting,

475
00:29:01,200 --> 00:29:04,880
Speaker 1: and there's so much more out there now than they're

476
00:29:05,040 --> 00:29:08,560
Speaker 1: used to be for like someone who's, you know, a

477
00:29:08,680 --> 00:29:11,520
Speaker 1: more casual gamer, sort of like in between that like

478
00:29:11,960 --> 00:29:15,080
Speaker 1: heavier game or somebody who wants to play like, for example,

479
00:29:15,120 --> 00:29:18,680
Speaker 1: a zul is another game that's out now that casual

480
00:29:18,800 --> 00:29:22,360
Speaker 1: but has a lot of depths and doesn't require two

481
00:29:22,440 --> 00:29:25,640
Speaker 1: hours of sitting at a table. And I'm so excited

482
00:29:26,160 --> 00:29:29,040
Speaker 1: that the industry is growing that way because like there's

483
00:29:29,280 --> 00:29:33,480
Speaker 1: room for all of those games. There's room for your

484
00:29:33,600 --> 00:29:37,960
Speaker 1: like twelve hour war Hammered campaign that you're going to

485
00:29:38,040 --> 00:29:41,040
Speaker 1: play in one day, and there's room for like a

486
00:29:41,280 --> 00:29:45,120
Speaker 1: casual card game like The Key Dragon Society that you

487
00:29:45,240 --> 00:29:47,040
Speaker 1: just want to play because it's cute and there's not

488
00:29:47,160 --> 00:29:50,760
Speaker 1: a lot of dramatic tension there. We have some more

489
00:29:50,880 --> 00:29:52,880
Speaker 1: of our conversation, but first we have a quick break

490
00:29:52,920 --> 00:30:05,120
Speaker 1: for a word fromer sponsor. We're back, Thank you, sponsor.

491
00:30:05,680 --> 00:30:09,480
Speaker 1: Let's get back to the interview. It's been kind of

492
00:30:09,560 --> 00:30:12,200
Speaker 1: a recent thing for me to discover and I've been

493
00:30:12,240 --> 00:30:16,200
Speaker 1: loving it. Of all of the spectrum of games that

494
00:30:16,280 --> 00:30:19,680
Speaker 1: you can play, I know, like we kind of touch

495
00:30:19,720 --> 00:30:21,800
Speaker 1: on this, but I would love if you could give

496
00:30:22,160 --> 00:30:27,640
Speaker 1: a little bit of a bigger explanation of like why

497
00:30:28,720 --> 00:30:34,960
Speaker 1: what drew you too developing tabletop games? Why why do

498
00:30:35,200 --> 00:30:40,240
Speaker 1: that at all? Yeah, Like, and I touched on earlier,

499
00:30:40,600 --> 00:30:42,880
Speaker 1: there was this concept of you know, how can we

500
00:30:42,920 --> 00:30:44,920
Speaker 1: make sure your cap of game. It literally was a

501
00:30:44,960 --> 00:30:48,040
Speaker 1: conversation of what we're having and it take we grabbing

502
00:30:48,080 --> 00:30:51,600
Speaker 1: next cards and wrote some things attom right, and then um,

503
00:30:52,360 --> 00:30:54,840
Speaker 1: we were like, wait a second, this could actually happen,

504
00:30:54,960 --> 00:30:58,280
Speaker 1: and just rearing into the concept, we could like see

505
00:30:58,320 --> 00:31:00,720
Speaker 1: what it was going to be. Already we were coming

506
00:31:00,800 --> 00:31:02,680
Speaker 1: up with the names of thing we're ready to go.

507
00:31:03,080 --> 00:31:05,840
Speaker 1: So because that happened that could be don't want them done.

508
00:31:06,320 --> 00:31:08,920
Speaker 1: But going through that process at least for me, and

509
00:31:09,600 --> 00:31:10,840
Speaker 1: you know, let me know if you think the same

510
00:31:10,880 --> 00:31:12,960
Speaker 1: way was what that got done? It was like not

511
00:31:13,120 --> 00:31:15,760
Speaker 1: only was that super fulfilling, it was super fun and

512
00:31:15,880 --> 00:31:19,760
Speaker 1: it like practice, it is a creativity that some other

513
00:31:19,880 --> 00:31:23,320
Speaker 1: like solo craft and artworks and writing like wasn't doing

514
00:31:23,400 --> 00:31:26,760
Speaker 1: for me anyway. So a lot of the fun of

515
00:31:26,840 --> 00:31:29,160
Speaker 1: what we do, what I like to do is think

516
00:31:29,200 --> 00:31:31,959
Speaker 1: about like the concept and like how would you make

517
00:31:31,960 --> 00:31:34,040
Speaker 1: a game for that or think of a game concept,

518
00:31:34,400 --> 00:31:37,320
Speaker 1: our game mechanic, Like what kind of thing would that be?

519
00:31:37,520 --> 00:31:40,040
Speaker 1: To me, that's like a fun puzzle that I'm solving

520
00:31:40,120 --> 00:31:42,600
Speaker 1: all the time. So I don't know about you have that,

521
00:31:42,680 --> 00:31:44,640
Speaker 1: but that is that's what keeps me going with it.

522
00:31:44,720 --> 00:31:48,400
Speaker 1: I think that's really fun. Yeah, you learned to what

523
00:31:48,560 --> 00:31:51,960
Speaker 1: Heather said. I love the puzzle solving aspect of it.

524
00:31:52,120 --> 00:31:55,480
Speaker 1: I love coming up with a pun about an animal

525
00:31:55,720 --> 00:31:58,280
Speaker 1: and being like, Okay, now, how could I turn this

526
00:31:58,480 --> 00:32:01,320
Speaker 1: into a game? And another part of it for me

527
00:32:01,800 --> 00:32:05,600
Speaker 1: is that, um, I've been working in the video game

528
00:32:05,640 --> 00:32:08,920
Speaker 1: industry for my day job since about two thousand five,

529
00:32:09,720 --> 00:32:15,080
Speaker 1: and there's there's like a whole different conversation to be

530
00:32:15,240 --> 00:32:18,400
Speaker 1: had about video games. But one of the things that

531
00:32:18,840 --> 00:32:25,120
Speaker 1: draws me to tabletop is this very like social nature

532
00:32:25,320 --> 00:32:28,400
Speaker 1: of it. And one of the things that I get

533
00:32:28,480 --> 00:32:34,080
Speaker 1: really excited about is helping people have a particular experience.

534
00:32:34,320 --> 00:32:36,920
Speaker 1: Right Like, when I make a game, in the back

535
00:32:37,000 --> 00:32:39,680
Speaker 1: of my mind, I'm like, I want people to play this,

536
00:32:39,920 --> 00:32:43,600
Speaker 1: and I want them to feel happy about this aspect.

537
00:32:44,000 --> 00:32:46,479
Speaker 1: I want them to laugh at this, I want them

538
00:32:46,520 --> 00:32:48,360
Speaker 1: to feel a certain way, and I want them to

539
00:32:48,480 --> 00:32:52,760
Speaker 1: leave the table having just like felt fulfilled by what

540
00:32:52,960 --> 00:32:57,160
Speaker 1: they've done and so like that's part of it for me.

541
00:32:57,600 --> 00:33:01,960
Speaker 1: And then another part of it is like introducing ideas

542
00:33:02,000 --> 00:33:06,920
Speaker 1: and concepts because you can learn so much from games, right,

543
00:33:07,080 --> 00:33:10,040
Speaker 1: Like you can learn weird facts about the world that

544
00:33:10,160 --> 00:33:14,080
Speaker 1: you never knew. Um, it changes the way that your

545
00:33:14,120 --> 00:33:19,120
Speaker 1: brain thinks, Like you can learn more math. Just stuff

546
00:33:19,200 --> 00:33:22,920
Speaker 1: like that gets me really really excited. Yeah, I agree

547
00:33:22,960 --> 00:33:25,400
Speaker 1: with you on the I do kind of think about,

548
00:33:25,440 --> 00:33:27,640
Speaker 1: like what's the experience that they're having at the table.

549
00:33:28,360 --> 00:33:31,360
Speaker 1: I've had game concepts where I was like the way,

550
00:33:31,560 --> 00:33:33,760
Speaker 1: like this is the game, like you know, this is

551
00:33:33,880 --> 00:33:35,480
Speaker 1: definitely how the game is going to be, and then

552
00:33:36,240 --> 00:33:38,160
Speaker 1: how they're playing it is not how I wanted to

553
00:33:38,360 --> 00:33:40,800
Speaker 1: go back to the drawing board, you know that kind

554
00:33:40,840 --> 00:33:43,400
Speaker 1: of thing. So, I mean it's sometimes it's frustrating because

555
00:33:43,440 --> 00:33:45,360
Speaker 1: you have to go through a lot of levels of

556
00:33:45,400 --> 00:33:47,920
Speaker 1: this bubble slobbing. But I think that's kind of the

557
00:33:48,280 --> 00:33:53,120
Speaker 1: fun rewarding part about it is it was actually reminding

558
00:33:53,160 --> 00:33:55,600
Speaker 1: me of when you were saying that how there look,

559
00:33:55,640 --> 00:33:57,320
Speaker 1: you know, I was like a chef or something. Is

560
00:33:57,360 --> 00:34:00,440
Speaker 1: like pubs like so happy that they really enjoyed that meal. Right,

561
00:34:00,560 --> 00:34:03,280
Speaker 1: It's kind of what you get it right and you

562
00:34:03,440 --> 00:34:05,800
Speaker 1: feel like it was right, and then people enjoy what

563
00:34:06,040 --> 00:34:08,239
Speaker 1: you did the way you expected, but say you're like, yes,

564
00:34:08,480 --> 00:34:11,680
Speaker 1: that's what I'm looking for, right, And yeah, not that's

565
00:34:11,719 --> 00:34:15,360
Speaker 1: going to happen every week like that anything. It's going

566
00:34:15,400 --> 00:34:17,040
Speaker 1: to think a while to get these games out there

567
00:34:17,400 --> 00:34:21,440
Speaker 1: and get that experience. But you know, that's definitely what

568
00:34:21,600 --> 00:34:26,080
Speaker 1: it is for me. And from a mechanics design I

569
00:34:26,160 --> 00:34:28,920
Speaker 1: have that math mind, so you know, sometimes they go

570
00:34:29,040 --> 00:34:30,800
Speaker 1: overly crunch you with the numbers and then I have

571
00:34:30,960 --> 00:34:34,880
Speaker 1: to scale back. Other times, you know, Heather or I

572
00:34:34,920 --> 00:34:36,640
Speaker 1: will come up with the concept and one of level

573
00:34:36,719 --> 00:34:40,239
Speaker 1: run with that. So so it's fun also for collaborating

574
00:34:40,280 --> 00:34:44,359
Speaker 1: for me. Yeah, and I like one thing, I really

575
00:34:44,680 --> 00:34:47,000
Speaker 1: I want to say this out loud, the whole podcasting

576
00:34:47,040 --> 00:34:50,360
Speaker 1: world can hear it. Like I think that Heather is

577
00:34:50,520 --> 00:34:56,760
Speaker 1: our best designer, like she thinks in this perfect blend

578
00:34:57,120 --> 00:35:04,080
Speaker 1: of math and theme, And so for me, it's super

579
00:35:04,280 --> 00:35:09,040
Speaker 1: exciting to work on projects with her because like I

580
00:35:09,360 --> 00:35:12,960
Speaker 1: know that whatever she comes up with, it's gonna be great,

581
00:35:13,080 --> 00:35:15,640
Speaker 1: and like she might not like it initially and we

582
00:35:15,760 --> 00:35:19,239
Speaker 1: might want to make changes or whatever. But like as

583
00:35:19,360 --> 00:35:22,040
Speaker 1: soon as how they started working on Equal Party, which

584
00:35:22,160 --> 00:35:24,279
Speaker 1: is the game that she designed that will have out

585
00:35:24,360 --> 00:35:27,520
Speaker 1: later this year, I was just like, are you kidding me?

586
00:35:27,920 --> 00:35:34,160
Speaker 1: You're a genius. I'm sorry, excited remaking this game? Thank you?

587
00:35:38,719 --> 00:35:42,200
Speaker 1: What is that support system? Wow? I know, yeah, yeah,

588
00:35:43,080 --> 00:35:46,400
Speaker 1: I love it. I love women supporting women. Yes, it

589
00:35:46,560 --> 00:35:48,759
Speaker 1: is all going than too. But he had somebody like,

590
00:35:49,000 --> 00:35:53,440
Speaker 1: you know, um, one of these things where again, never

591
00:35:53,680 --> 00:35:55,360
Speaker 1: I never thought that that's something I was going to do,

592
00:35:55,520 --> 00:35:58,279
Speaker 1: but it just so just so happened that, you know,

593
00:35:58,640 --> 00:36:02,359
Speaker 1: after trying to the process of the first game, it's

594
00:36:02,400 --> 00:36:05,439
Speaker 1: oblidified it for us. So we're going to be going

595
00:36:05,520 --> 00:36:10,920
Speaker 1: into this year probably putting out two or three more

596
00:36:11,040 --> 00:36:13,839
Speaker 1: card games at Board Games and two or three more

597
00:36:14,000 --> 00:36:16,960
Speaker 1: arputs by the middle of next year. So we're definitely

598
00:36:17,080 --> 00:36:21,440
Speaker 1: ramping up. Yeah, it's just fine. We're really exciting. We

599
00:36:21,600 --> 00:36:25,680
Speaker 1: just this week we've had a conversation about a possible

600
00:36:26,400 --> 00:36:29,680
Speaker 1: new venue for getting our games out there. And like

601
00:36:30,239 --> 00:36:34,440
Speaker 1: every time that we have those conversations that we get

602
00:36:34,520 --> 00:36:38,080
Speaker 1: to that point, it's so exciting because like I can

603
00:36:38,239 --> 00:36:41,640
Speaker 1: feel the company growing and I can feel us growing

604
00:36:42,200 --> 00:36:45,880
Speaker 1: as designers and as publishers, and it just I don't know,

605
00:36:46,000 --> 00:36:49,680
Speaker 1: it just makes me happy. Yeah, yeah, you know. And

606
00:36:49,719 --> 00:36:51,359
Speaker 1: then they always say like do what you love, right,

607
00:36:51,400 --> 00:36:53,040
Speaker 1: It's like, well, it's like I don't even have to

608
00:36:53,360 --> 00:36:55,160
Speaker 1: working with us to do this. It's just something I'm

609
00:36:55,160 --> 00:36:58,840
Speaker 1: always thinking about, you know, or I don't mind working on.

610
00:36:59,200 --> 00:37:03,759
Speaker 1: So that's the good signs that we like it. Yeah,

611
00:37:04,400 --> 00:37:06,279
Speaker 1: letting a lot of our free guys doing it. You know.

612
00:37:07,080 --> 00:37:10,840
Speaker 1: I love the comparison to a good dish created by

613
00:37:10,880 --> 00:37:13,719
Speaker 1: a chef. That's wonderful. It wasn't until Heather the way

614
00:37:13,760 --> 00:37:15,279
Speaker 1: Heather was talking about it. I'm like, you know what

615
00:37:15,440 --> 00:37:17,960
Speaker 1: this is reminding me of how proud the chef is

616
00:37:18,040 --> 00:37:21,200
Speaker 1: when you know, when somebody play the game, but what

617
00:37:21,360 --> 00:37:23,719
Speaker 1: it is like that, And yeah, I mean that's the

618
00:37:23,840 --> 00:37:27,160
Speaker 1: keep to going. And I'm also I also think it's

619
00:37:27,160 --> 00:37:30,440
Speaker 1: really foreign playing someone else's game because're like, oh my god,

620
00:37:30,480 --> 00:37:32,279
Speaker 1: this is such a cool, like what's come over with

621
00:37:32,320 --> 00:37:34,400
Speaker 1: this concept? Because just because I let's thinking of a

622
00:37:34,480 --> 00:37:37,560
Speaker 1: million things doesn't mean we're not even touching the surface

623
00:37:37,640 --> 00:37:39,600
Speaker 1: of what everybody else is doing either, you know. So

624
00:37:39,920 --> 00:37:43,960
Speaker 1: it's really fun being the gaming community and get to

625
00:37:44,040 --> 00:37:46,439
Speaker 1: try these games before they come out by a bunch

626
00:37:46,480 --> 00:37:49,839
Speaker 1: of different designers, and you know, to the way they're thinking.

627
00:37:50,640 --> 00:37:53,480
Speaker 1: Like I also really like that. That's another angle that

628
00:37:53,560 --> 00:37:56,520
Speaker 1: I didn't expect to be involved with either, going to

629
00:37:56,560 --> 00:38:01,160
Speaker 1: all these industry events and things. So that's the Yeah. Yeah,

630
00:38:01,480 --> 00:38:06,960
Speaker 1: I uh my my minimal experience. I'm getting ready to

631
00:38:07,040 --> 00:38:10,959
Speaker 1: d M my first game for Dungeons and Drawings. Yeah,

632
00:38:11,880 --> 00:38:15,359
Speaker 1: And um, it's been fun because we have a career

633
00:38:15,480 --> 00:38:17,640
Speaker 1: that's been playing for like a year and a half now,

634
00:38:18,440 --> 00:38:22,360
Speaker 1: and we take turns d M NG and just knowing

635
00:38:22,520 --> 00:38:27,040
Speaker 1: like one person who d M is very good at

636
00:38:27,080 --> 00:38:29,600
Speaker 1: this one thing and how creative they were about this,

637
00:38:29,920 --> 00:38:32,239
Speaker 1: and someone else is really good at this other thing

638
00:38:32,360 --> 00:38:35,480
Speaker 1: and they were creative about this. Um, it's been really

639
00:38:35,560 --> 00:38:40,560
Speaker 1: rewarding and exciting to plan basically what sounds like a

640
00:38:40,680 --> 00:38:47,400
Speaker 1: plan that no one will follow. But speaking of playing

641
00:38:47,520 --> 00:38:51,560
Speaker 1: other people's games, do you both have any favorites or

642
00:38:51,600 --> 00:38:56,920
Speaker 1: any games that inspired you? Yeah? So for me, we

643
00:38:57,200 --> 00:39:01,160
Speaker 1: we have these friends Anthony and Nicole Lamato. There are

644
00:39:01,239 --> 00:39:06,839
Speaker 1: companies called Cardboard Fortress, and I'm always inspired by their

645
00:39:06,960 --> 00:39:13,320
Speaker 1: games because they're so unique and whenever they have a prototype.

646
00:39:13,360 --> 00:39:15,960
Speaker 1: I'm like, oh my gosh, I never would have thought

647
00:39:16,000 --> 00:39:22,600
Speaker 1: of that, Like that's just amazing. And another continual inspiration

648
00:39:22,760 --> 00:39:26,279
Speaker 1: and sort of a favorite for me is the very

649
00:39:26,400 --> 00:39:33,200
Speaker 1: old Palladium Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles role playing game. I yeah,

650
00:39:34,640 --> 00:39:39,000
Speaker 1: I must have won those books like a billion times,

651
00:39:39,120 --> 00:39:42,239
Speaker 1: like tried to run a game for my dad when

652
00:39:42,280 --> 00:39:46,840
Speaker 1: I was welved, and just for some reason, those books

653
00:39:46,960 --> 00:39:52,160
Speaker 1: like really stuck with me and like really inspire me

654
00:39:52,520 --> 00:39:56,560
Speaker 1: to World Belt. And then like as far as games

655
00:39:56,640 --> 00:40:00,200
Speaker 1: that I just want to play all the time, I'm

656
00:40:00,719 --> 00:40:03,640
Speaker 1: I always want to play Splendor, and I always want

657
00:40:03,680 --> 00:40:06,440
Speaker 1: to play this card game called Tempora, which is a

658
00:40:06,560 --> 00:40:10,279
Speaker 1: push your luck game where everybody is a cat and

659
00:40:10,400 --> 00:40:12,840
Speaker 1: you're trying to eat the most sushi without getting a

660
00:40:12,960 --> 00:40:23,600
Speaker 1: tummy egg. That is my life. Yeah, you know, it's funny.

661
00:40:23,840 --> 00:40:25,520
Speaker 1: One of the games. Like I guess that I'm not

662
00:40:25,760 --> 00:40:28,440
Speaker 1: really a huge role playing person. I didn't read the

663
00:40:28,640 --> 00:40:30,799
Speaker 1: RPG books when I was younger. I don't really read

664
00:40:30,840 --> 00:40:33,240
Speaker 1: them now. But one of the games that I always

665
00:40:33,400 --> 00:40:37,440
Speaker 1: always always want to play and that I'm super groundbreaking

666
00:40:37,480 --> 00:40:41,040
Speaker 1: for me to play with Fiasco, which is Jason Mornings

667
00:40:42,360 --> 00:40:45,480
Speaker 1: kind of story telling but like an intro RPG that

668
00:40:45,760 --> 00:40:49,160
Speaker 1: guide you by building relationships so that I'll play that

669
00:40:49,239 --> 00:40:52,839
Speaker 1: any day, And it really got me over the hump

670
00:40:52,920 --> 00:40:56,320
Speaker 1: of being nervous about while playing and story tampling and

671
00:40:56,480 --> 00:40:59,040
Speaker 1: makes me think about the way he sets his games

672
00:40:59,120 --> 00:41:01,960
Speaker 1: up about how to do that from an experience level,

673
00:41:02,160 --> 00:41:04,840
Speaker 1: you know, for for our games. So definitely that for

674
00:41:05,000 --> 00:41:09,440
Speaker 1: that perspective. And then I also love Splendor. But a

675
00:41:09,560 --> 00:41:12,919
Speaker 1: game that it totally still out, but it was called Bananza, yeah,

676
00:41:14,320 --> 00:41:17,840
Speaker 1: is a game where you plant beings in a field

677
00:41:18,280 --> 00:41:21,120
Speaker 1: to German game, so that's what it's called. Back the

678
00:41:21,239 --> 00:41:25,360
Speaker 1: stilly name. There's actually an interesting cart mechanics strategy, but

679
00:41:25,520 --> 00:41:29,279
Speaker 1: you also have to similarly to Settlers of the time,

680
00:41:29,360 --> 00:41:32,319
Speaker 1: you have to kind of yell out, hey, I can

681
00:41:32,360 --> 00:41:35,279
Speaker 1: give you get to negotiate and give people options the

682
00:41:35,440 --> 00:41:37,399
Speaker 1: wholes they're gonna be acuities, I can get the three,

683
00:41:37,520 --> 00:41:39,880
Speaker 1: or I can give you this at this And I

684
00:41:40,120 --> 00:41:42,359
Speaker 1: like that a lot. So that's something else that kind

685
00:41:42,360 --> 00:41:45,160
Speaker 1: of inspired me, Like that's a different kind of mechanics

686
00:41:45,200 --> 00:41:47,680
Speaker 1: and you're seeing by just moving pieces around the board.

687
00:41:48,200 --> 00:41:50,239
Speaker 1: So that was one of the first games that you

688
00:41:50,400 --> 00:41:53,600
Speaker 1: basically almost yelling at each other across to people. But

689
00:41:53,680 --> 00:41:56,879
Speaker 1: it's super fun. So that's another one that will always play.

690
00:41:57,200 --> 00:42:01,759
Speaker 1: And daughter was an interesting concept. Two. Piggyback on what

691
00:42:01,960 --> 00:42:05,960
Speaker 1: Heather said, I've actually stopped playing Bonanza because I am

692
00:42:06,120 --> 00:42:11,600
Speaker 1: not a competitive game player. Except for Bonanza. I will

693
00:42:12,000 --> 00:42:16,960
Speaker 1: just turn into a monster at the table. And and

694
00:42:17,280 --> 00:42:20,600
Speaker 1: Heather mentioned Jason morning Star, and the two of us

695
00:42:20,719 --> 00:42:25,040
Speaker 1: were lucky enough to play a prototype of his at

696
00:42:25,080 --> 00:42:28,520
Speaker 1: a convention this last ball and it was so exciting

697
00:42:28,680 --> 00:42:34,160
Speaker 1: because like man, he thinks in these really unique ways

698
00:42:34,400 --> 00:42:39,120
Speaker 1: and makes such fantastic games like oh and um, a

699
00:42:39,200 --> 00:42:42,600
Speaker 1: cute little anexcote is that you know, we're both named Heather,

700
00:42:42,800 --> 00:42:45,600
Speaker 1: and you know we're friends and we worked together and

701
00:42:46,280 --> 00:42:49,200
Speaker 1: we had not played Fiasco together. So a couple of

702
00:42:49,280 --> 00:42:52,439
Speaker 1: years ago at a convention, we were like, hey, let's

703
00:42:52,440 --> 00:42:55,239
Speaker 1: play Fiasco because a friend of ours had wrote a

704
00:42:55,360 --> 00:43:01,000
Speaker 1: Fiasco playset for being in a Wizard School. And completely separately,

705
00:43:01,560 --> 00:43:05,440
Speaker 1: we both named our characters be York without knowing that

706
00:43:05,560 --> 00:43:12,480
Speaker 1: the other one was doing Yeah, New York, just wizards

707
00:43:12,560 --> 00:43:17,640
Speaker 1: for other for Heather. And it's so funny because you

708
00:43:17,760 --> 00:43:20,120
Speaker 1: know we don't see it all the time. I mean,

709
00:43:20,200 --> 00:43:22,560
Speaker 1: were tough pretty often, but we were just like on

710
00:43:22,680 --> 00:43:24,920
Speaker 1: that mind all at that time. It was very funny.

711
00:43:25,400 --> 00:43:29,960
Speaker 1: But yeah, definitely that one if you haven't tried that,

712
00:43:30,200 --> 00:43:33,080
Speaker 1: that Fiasco game is a great intro if you if

713
00:43:33,120 --> 00:43:35,920
Speaker 1: you want to start role playing. Um, from experience, I

714
00:43:35,960 --> 00:43:38,399
Speaker 1: can put to that, there's like it's fun out there.

715
00:43:38,520 --> 00:43:40,680
Speaker 1: But that would say those are the the ones that

716
00:43:40,680 --> 00:43:44,600
Speaker 1: could stick out to me as like pivotal moments. For me,

717
00:43:44,719 --> 00:43:50,320
Speaker 1: it was Pandemic for sure. Okay, yeah, oh my god.

718
00:43:52,880 --> 00:43:55,839
Speaker 1: What is it that you like about Pandemic? I think

719
00:43:55,840 --> 00:43:59,000
Speaker 1: it's because, um, I could play it with two people,

720
00:44:00,360 --> 00:44:03,520
Speaker 1: and like I said, a lot of my friends are

721
00:44:04,640 --> 00:44:09,320
Speaker 1: I'm very I'm extremely competitive. I am so competitive. I

722
00:44:09,440 --> 00:44:12,480
Speaker 1: kind of have to like dial into a different persona

723
00:44:12,480 --> 00:44:15,080
Speaker 1: and when I'm playing with my non competitive friends because

724
00:44:15,239 --> 00:44:19,160
Speaker 1: I'll just turn them off of everything. Um. But they

725
00:44:19,360 --> 00:44:22,480
Speaker 1: liked Pandemic because we weren't competing against each other. We

726
00:44:22,560 --> 00:44:25,120
Speaker 1: were competing against the game, even if it was very difficult.

727
00:44:25,680 --> 00:44:27,520
Speaker 1: I think it was more like they didn't want to

728
00:44:27,600 --> 00:44:31,719
Speaker 1: create enemies. We played Life once and we'll never talk

729
00:44:31,760 --> 00:44:36,840
Speaker 1: about it again. Like it was inos it was infamous.

730
00:44:36,920 --> 00:44:40,319
Speaker 1: I'm like, you know, I didn't really win the lottery, right,

731
00:44:42,160 --> 00:44:48,319
Speaker 1: but people were mad. But Pandemic, Yeah, it was great,

732
00:44:48,680 --> 00:44:52,080
Speaker 1: Like we will not talk about it. I remember specifically

733
00:44:53,640 --> 00:44:57,520
Speaker 1: the people were arguing about kids, about jobs and it's

734
00:44:57,560 --> 00:45:04,279
Speaker 1: a game. Weel. Yeah, but I loved I love the

735
00:45:04,320 --> 00:45:09,440
Speaker 1: Pandemic because it allowed me to introduce friends of mine

736
00:45:09,719 --> 00:45:11,439
Speaker 1: who I hang out with a lot to a game

737
00:45:11,480 --> 00:45:15,040
Speaker 1: that they would actually play, and um, it was fun.

738
00:45:15,880 --> 00:45:20,800
Speaker 1: That's awesome. We have a little bit more left to discuss,

739
00:45:20,920 --> 00:45:23,080
Speaker 1: but first we have one more quick break forward from

740
00:45:23,080 --> 00:45:35,200
Speaker 1: our sponsor m H and we're back. Thank you, sponsor.

741
00:45:35,480 --> 00:45:38,080
Speaker 1: Let's get back to it. One thing that is not

742
00:45:38,160 --> 00:45:41,080
Speaker 1: awesome that I didn't want to talk about is, as

743
00:45:41,120 --> 00:45:43,640
Speaker 1: I'm sure both of you know, you're kind of a

744
00:45:43,800 --> 00:45:48,240
Speaker 1: rarity in the world of tabletop game development. I believe

745
00:45:48,320 --> 00:45:50,399
Speaker 1: it's less than ten percent. I think it's eight percent

746
00:45:51,200 --> 00:45:56,239
Speaker 1: of tabletop game developers are women. It sounds like both

747
00:45:56,320 --> 00:46:00,759
Speaker 1: of you have had a generally good experience, But have

748
00:46:00,960 --> 00:46:05,399
Speaker 1: you experienced sexism in this tailtop gaming world or other

749
00:46:05,560 --> 00:46:09,920
Speaker 1: obstacles that have gotten in your way? Yeah? I mean

750
00:46:10,520 --> 00:46:13,160
Speaker 1: I wouldn't say it's it's really really horrible or anything

751
00:46:13,239 --> 00:46:15,600
Speaker 1: like that, but I feel like, definitely there has been

752
00:46:16,080 --> 00:46:22,239
Speaker 1: some where, you know, especially before anybody knew my name

753
00:46:22,400 --> 00:46:23,960
Speaker 1: or our names, who was like, who the heck are

754
00:46:24,000 --> 00:46:25,879
Speaker 1: these people? How does their ticks started doing that good?

755
00:46:25,960 --> 00:46:27,799
Speaker 1: It's like whoa, whoa, whoa. If that was some dude,

756
00:46:27,960 --> 00:46:30,920
Speaker 1: wouldn't have paid anything about it, you know. So some

757
00:46:31,000 --> 00:46:32,840
Speaker 1: of some of that kind of stuff at the very beginning,

758
00:46:33,200 --> 00:46:36,960
Speaker 1: or more consumer people would say, oh you made this game,

759
00:46:37,320 --> 00:46:42,000
Speaker 1: like yeah, yeah, like maybe taken aback as you're actually

760
00:46:42,040 --> 00:46:44,279
Speaker 1: talking about it. They think, oh, you're a woman in

761
00:46:44,360 --> 00:46:46,120
Speaker 1: the booth. You're just here to sell the game to me.

762
00:46:46,360 --> 00:46:50,600
Speaker 1: You don't make the games. And that was that I

763
00:46:50,680 --> 00:46:54,279
Speaker 1: think changed a little bit because people maybe not but

764
00:46:54,400 --> 00:46:57,319
Speaker 1: I haven't noticed as many consumers doing it. But I've

765
00:46:57,360 --> 00:47:00,600
Speaker 1: definitely remember the first couple of years than be Shoka

766
00:47:00,880 --> 00:47:05,600
Speaker 1: that was like, oh you made this game. Yeah, there's

767
00:47:05,680 --> 00:47:10,000
Speaker 1: definitely I've I've experienced that as well, the surprise that like,

768
00:47:10,760 --> 00:47:13,240
Speaker 1: you know, I made the game. And then there's also

769
00:47:13,960 --> 00:47:16,920
Speaker 1: this happens to me a lot when I'm demoing, and

770
00:47:17,080 --> 00:47:20,560
Speaker 1: I tend to just let it go because it doesn't

771
00:47:20,640 --> 00:47:23,800
Speaker 1: feel worth the fight to me. But a lot of

772
00:47:23,960 --> 00:47:28,719
Speaker 1: times when I'm explaining how to play a game. If

773
00:47:28,840 --> 00:47:33,360
Speaker 1: the group is mixed or all dudes, they will jump

774
00:47:33,440 --> 00:47:38,800
Speaker 1: in and start explaining for me. And yeah, I find

775
00:47:38,880 --> 00:47:44,640
Speaker 1: that really frustrating. And I definitely have run into like

776
00:47:44,960 --> 00:47:50,160
Speaker 1: if I'm talking to, you know, a man who's developing games,

777
00:47:50,920 --> 00:47:53,800
Speaker 1: the thing that happens is like, I'll be really excited

778
00:47:53,840 --> 00:47:57,040
Speaker 1: about an idea, and every once in a while, like

779
00:47:57,360 --> 00:47:59,880
Speaker 1: the dudes in the industry that I talked to a

780
00:48:00,000 --> 00:48:02,680
Speaker 1: at it or like, oh yeah, that's okay, but what

781
00:48:02,800 --> 00:48:08,200
Speaker 1: if you did this instead? And that's kind of disappointing. Um,

782
00:48:08,760 --> 00:48:10,560
Speaker 1: And most of the time I don't listen to them,

783
00:48:10,600 --> 00:48:13,800
Speaker 1: which is good. Like, that's my advice. If someone saying

784
00:48:14,280 --> 00:48:16,640
Speaker 1: like things like that that are making you feel bad,

785
00:48:17,080 --> 00:48:21,279
Speaker 1: just stop listening to them. Yeah. And the thing I

786
00:48:21,320 --> 00:48:24,000
Speaker 1: could say, one of the things that's hard, there's two

787
00:48:24,120 --> 00:48:26,160
Speaker 1: levels of this. So there's the level where it's hum

788
00:48:26,520 --> 00:48:29,120
Speaker 1: that's really hard because I'm trying to sell a game

789
00:48:29,200 --> 00:48:31,439
Speaker 1: to you, Okay, so I don't just trying to demo

790
00:48:31,560 --> 00:48:34,719
Speaker 1: this game. If people look going until we buy our game, right,

791
00:48:35,520 --> 00:48:37,640
Speaker 1: and you don't want to start anything of these people

792
00:48:37,680 --> 00:48:40,160
Speaker 1: because you wanted to buy the game. But also where

793
00:48:40,320 --> 00:48:44,080
Speaker 1: that line where we where we say okay, like buddy,

794
00:48:44,120 --> 00:48:47,480
Speaker 1: you got a body, you know, but yeah, doing that,

795
00:48:47,719 --> 00:48:49,960
Speaker 1: it feels like you're thing not worth a fight in

796
00:48:50,040 --> 00:48:54,680
Speaker 1: that situation. I've seen more. I've had more things happen

797
00:48:55,040 --> 00:48:59,239
Speaker 1: in the industry that were either its completely looked over.

798
00:49:00,239 --> 00:49:02,799
Speaker 1: There's a to do designers for table and me at

799
00:49:02,800 --> 00:49:04,960
Speaker 1: the table and another gy comes up and like, doesn't

800
00:49:05,000 --> 00:49:07,640
Speaker 1: even be high to me because it's sambling on to

801
00:49:07,800 --> 00:49:12,680
Speaker 1: other people. That definitely happens, and just you know, some

802
00:49:12,920 --> 00:49:17,759
Speaker 1: nicer people or some you know, were aware people will

803
00:49:17,840 --> 00:49:20,799
Speaker 1: sometimes say something like what do you think, Heather, because

804
00:49:20,840 --> 00:49:22,759
Speaker 1: they could tell that the other two people are just

805
00:49:23,200 --> 00:49:25,759
Speaker 1: in their own world, is completely ignoring me, and we're

806
00:49:25,760 --> 00:49:27,960
Speaker 1: having a game design composition and they just as Tom,

807
00:49:28,000 --> 00:49:31,120
Speaker 1: I don't know anything about game design. That's definitely happened

808
00:49:31,120 --> 00:49:33,920
Speaker 1: a couple of times. And I think partly that there

809
00:49:34,040 --> 00:49:36,440
Speaker 1: is kind of this it's not really right, it's not

810
00:49:36,520 --> 00:49:40,000
Speaker 1: really their fault, but there's certain game designers that are

811
00:49:40,040 --> 00:49:42,800
Speaker 1: men in the industry that anything they touch is basically

812
00:49:42,840 --> 00:49:47,239
Speaker 1: goal through a bunch of people, and even other male

813
00:49:47,280 --> 00:49:50,320
Speaker 1: designers can't compete with them, and let alone a female

814
00:49:50,360 --> 00:49:54,600
Speaker 1: desider So sometimes I'm in a situation talking with them

815
00:49:55,160 --> 00:49:57,520
Speaker 1: and they're talking to me and everything is fine, But

816
00:49:57,680 --> 00:50:01,880
Speaker 1: if the other people around us that that either completely

817
00:50:01,880 --> 00:50:04,799
Speaker 1: ignore me, completely dismiss what I say, overstep when I'm talking,

818
00:50:04,920 --> 00:50:08,000
Speaker 1: talk right over me, and it's like whoa, he's also

819
00:50:08,080 --> 00:50:11,040
Speaker 1: So I've had a lot of those situations where if

820
00:50:11,080 --> 00:50:13,120
Speaker 1: I know that well enough, I like to say, like, whoa,

821
00:50:13,200 --> 00:50:14,840
Speaker 1: what the heck you know? But if I don't know

822
00:50:15,040 --> 00:50:17,400
Speaker 1: these people, or I'm in a weird situation, even and

823
00:50:17,520 --> 00:50:21,640
Speaker 1: I'm pretty competent person, I will still kind of feel like, Okay,

824
00:50:21,719 --> 00:50:24,279
Speaker 1: that was bad and I gotta get the situation. There's

825
00:50:24,320 --> 00:50:26,520
Speaker 1: been things like that from an industry perspective that I

826
00:50:26,719 --> 00:50:31,600
Speaker 1: that I did not like. Obviously, definitely the the idea

827
00:50:31,680 --> 00:50:34,160
Speaker 1: that Heather had where the content you're talking about, where

828
00:50:34,200 --> 00:50:36,160
Speaker 1: someone will just say, oh, I have this better idea

829
00:50:37,440 --> 00:50:42,040
Speaker 1: for what you're working on. I've definitely seen from testing

830
00:50:42,320 --> 00:50:46,000
Speaker 1: groups and different things. I learned one of the locations

831
00:50:46,080 --> 00:50:50,000
Speaker 1: of group club, the Gamemakers Gilles in Philadelphia. So Nicole,

832
00:50:50,120 --> 00:50:53,200
Speaker 1: who also was from here, she runs the one in Philadelphia.

833
00:50:53,280 --> 00:50:55,320
Speaker 1: I want to run the one in the Philadelphia suburb

834
00:50:55,920 --> 00:51:00,239
Speaker 1: and usually it's mostly all men. There might be another

835
00:51:00,280 --> 00:51:03,880
Speaker 1: woman that shows up in my group, and there's a

836
00:51:04,000 --> 00:51:06,160
Speaker 1: lot of gotta deal with their now. Because I run

837
00:51:06,200 --> 00:51:09,520
Speaker 1: it and because they're introduced to me right away as

838
00:51:09,600 --> 00:51:13,320
Speaker 1: the leader. I usually don't have too many problems, but

839
00:51:13,960 --> 00:51:17,520
Speaker 1: sometimes I do. And that's tough as well, where either

840
00:51:18,239 --> 00:51:20,480
Speaker 1: you know, getting a word and edge wise then taking

841
00:51:20,520 --> 00:51:22,880
Speaker 1: your opinion to heart and actually thinking you know what

842
00:51:22,960 --> 00:51:26,879
Speaker 1: you're talking about, that kind of stuff after they hear, oh,

843
00:51:27,560 --> 00:51:29,520
Speaker 1: oh you learn the game company, Oh you have a

844
00:51:29,560 --> 00:51:31,680
Speaker 1: couple of published games. Oh then they changed the KAM.

845
00:51:32,040 --> 00:51:33,640
Speaker 1: But if I came in and just started talking, I

846
00:51:33,760 --> 00:51:36,879
Speaker 1: think and they didn't know that, I think I'd even

847
00:51:36,880 --> 00:51:39,200
Speaker 1: get more pushed back. But sometimes I have to be like, well,

848
00:51:39,360 --> 00:51:41,080
Speaker 1: let me think of this game, and you know, this

849
00:51:41,200 --> 00:51:43,000
Speaker 1: one sells pretty well as far as the noble. They're like,

850
00:51:43,000 --> 00:51:44,960
Speaker 1: oh wait a second. You know, so all of a sudden,

851
00:51:44,960 --> 00:51:47,319
Speaker 1: I got spread because of that. But if I don't,

852
00:51:47,440 --> 00:51:49,520
Speaker 1: if I don't have that and I'm just another game

853
00:51:49,600 --> 00:51:52,960
Speaker 1: designer or just another woman with food feedback, it doesn't

854
00:51:53,000 --> 00:51:56,880
Speaker 1: have this to come back to them. They're probably discounting

855
00:51:56,920 --> 00:51:59,880
Speaker 1: everything that you just say, you know, which is annoying,

856
00:52:00,719 --> 00:52:03,120
Speaker 1: you know, and I don't know necessarily how to change that.

857
00:52:04,760 --> 00:52:10,719
Speaker 1: You can, yeah, I thank you have to start respecting women. Yeah,

858
00:52:10,880 --> 00:52:18,560
Speaker 1: well right, yeah, we've had a good experience. We're not,

859
00:52:19,160 --> 00:52:22,640
Speaker 1: you know, necessarily jaded by the industry. However, we still

860
00:52:22,680 --> 00:52:24,560
Speaker 1: have this kind of stuff happening to us, and we're

861
00:52:24,560 --> 00:52:29,359
Speaker 1: in a good situation, right, So take that to heart.

862
00:52:29,480 --> 00:52:32,160
Speaker 1: You know, this is the best option that you're probably

863
00:52:32,200 --> 00:52:34,320
Speaker 1: going to hear a story. You're going to hear from people,

864
00:52:34,440 --> 00:52:40,960
Speaker 1: so you know, yeah, I mean I don't because we're

865
00:52:40,960 --> 00:52:43,920
Speaker 1: talking game industry and there's a lot of men in

866
00:52:44,000 --> 00:52:46,080
Speaker 1: the game industry. This is coming up. But if you

867
00:52:46,120 --> 00:52:48,680
Speaker 1: just think about like just in general, like a business

868
00:52:48,719 --> 00:52:53,399
Speaker 1: world or you know, talking about whatever else we're talking about,

869
00:52:53,400 --> 00:52:57,440
Speaker 1: tech world, whatever, it's probably very similar. It's just so

870
00:52:57,680 --> 00:53:01,160
Speaker 1: happens that because we're talking about there, we're saying a

871
00:53:01,200 --> 00:53:04,759
Speaker 1: game industry. It's not not just game industry. You know,

872
00:53:04,920 --> 00:53:08,480
Speaker 1: then the women, but it's just so male dominated that

873
00:53:09,440 --> 00:53:13,040
Speaker 1: it's sometimes I think even on conscious that these guys

874
00:53:13,120 --> 00:53:16,160
Speaker 1: even come up with the concept that that we would

875
00:53:16,200 --> 00:53:19,400
Speaker 1: know what we're talking about them. They're they're innocent in

876
00:53:19,480 --> 00:53:22,840
Speaker 1: that I didn't know like, well you need to know,

877
00:53:23,600 --> 00:53:26,920
Speaker 1: so there some of that happened to Yeah, so I

878
00:53:27,040 --> 00:53:29,840
Speaker 1: think that's very true. I think a lot of it

879
00:53:30,200 --> 00:53:34,680
Speaker 1: is like people just not knowing any better, right, And

880
00:53:34,880 --> 00:53:38,680
Speaker 1: because I spend a lot of time on the Internet,

881
00:53:38,840 --> 00:53:43,040
Speaker 1: that allows me to learn a lot very quickly, but

882
00:53:43,200 --> 00:53:46,360
Speaker 1: not everybody does that. And so there's part of me

883
00:53:46,600 --> 00:53:49,800
Speaker 1: that's like, Okay, I'm gonna call things out when I

884
00:53:49,920 --> 00:53:52,440
Speaker 1: see them as much as I can. But I also

885
00:53:53,800 --> 00:53:58,479
Speaker 1: I also understand that sometimes people need a little time

886
00:53:58,560 --> 00:54:02,400
Speaker 1: to learn. M h. Yeah. But I mean I'll give

887
00:54:02,480 --> 00:54:04,719
Speaker 1: someone the benefit it out here and there. But we

888
00:54:05,040 --> 00:54:07,600
Speaker 1: definitely and I definitely have seen it happen where you know,

889
00:54:07,600 --> 00:54:11,000
Speaker 1: it's the same person, the same group of people. They

890
00:54:11,080 --> 00:54:14,480
Speaker 1: either don't want to learn, or they don't care, or

891
00:54:15,160 --> 00:54:19,319
Speaker 1: they literally can't get the concept. Heca Sometimes there's back

892
00:54:19,760 --> 00:54:22,480
Speaker 1: they've been told already. They either it goes right over

893
00:54:22,520 --> 00:54:24,920
Speaker 1: their heads, they don't even understand what we're talking about.

894
00:54:25,320 --> 00:54:29,040
Speaker 1: They choose not to listen, or they think they're listening

895
00:54:29,080 --> 00:54:31,719
Speaker 1: and helping it and really not a lot of that,

896
00:54:33,120 --> 00:54:37,880
Speaker 1: which that bothers me. Actually, sometimes more when someone tries to,

897
00:54:38,239 --> 00:54:41,120
Speaker 1: you know, be on a woman's side, and you can't

898
00:54:41,160 --> 00:54:45,440
Speaker 1: quite tell if it's real or not. Sometimes that is

899
00:54:46,520 --> 00:54:49,600
Speaker 1: they're so only board sometimes that I can't tell us

900
00:54:49,640 --> 00:54:52,000
Speaker 1: it's even real. But I'll take that over some of

901
00:54:52,000 --> 00:54:54,759
Speaker 1: the other stuff. I'll take that. But sometimes there is

902
00:54:54,840 --> 00:54:58,680
Speaker 1: some of that too that I don't know, we'll see. Yeah,

903
00:54:59,120 --> 00:55:02,440
Speaker 1: it's just so much because it's so social on like

904
00:55:02,840 --> 00:55:05,560
Speaker 1: video games and all of that. Like you're not just

905
00:55:05,840 --> 00:55:08,640
Speaker 1: doing all this on chats and tweets, which is horrible,

906
00:55:08,640 --> 00:55:11,719
Speaker 1: and people will say more because it's it's anonymous. But

907
00:55:11,920 --> 00:55:15,719
Speaker 1: this is stuff that they're saying to your face, and

908
00:55:15,880 --> 00:55:17,480
Speaker 1: even though it might not be as harsh as what

909
00:55:17,680 --> 00:55:21,480
Speaker 1: would be said on Twitter, they're still saying something to

910
00:55:21,800 --> 00:55:25,879
Speaker 1: you or about you, And even if it's only hence,

911
00:55:25,920 --> 00:55:27,600
Speaker 1: it's kind of what they would say on Twitter. It's

912
00:55:27,600 --> 00:55:31,120
Speaker 1: like there's somebody behind that, right, and sometimes the tone

913
00:55:31,239 --> 00:55:35,600
Speaker 1: even you can tell. So there's definitely that is where

914
00:55:35,800 --> 00:55:38,480
Speaker 1: I've noticed, and it probably is just the state of

915
00:55:38,600 --> 00:55:42,319
Speaker 1: the world. Definitely have noticed people speaking up a little

916
00:55:42,320 --> 00:55:45,799
Speaker 1: bit more on things and overstepping people a little bit

917
00:55:45,880 --> 00:55:48,799
Speaker 1: more in the last few years, being a little less

918
00:55:48,880 --> 00:55:51,320
Speaker 1: PC I would say convinced it's not all conventions, but

919
00:55:51,440 --> 00:55:54,200
Speaker 1: I have seen that a little bit popping up and

920
00:55:54,280 --> 00:55:56,040
Speaker 1: again trying to get that in the bud And we

921
00:55:56,120 --> 00:55:59,600
Speaker 1: haven't had too many horrible situations happen around us or anything,

922
00:55:59,760 --> 00:56:04,040
Speaker 1: but definitely witnessed it, seeing it and heard it on

923
00:56:04,160 --> 00:56:08,040
Speaker 1: it a lot last couple of years. Yeah, m hmm.

924
00:56:08,840 --> 00:56:13,560
Speaker 1: What other problems do you see, if any? And how

925
00:56:13,719 --> 00:56:19,680
Speaker 1: could we make tabletop games better for everyone? Big question? Sorry,

926
00:56:21,400 --> 00:56:23,440
Speaker 1: we're gonna solve all the problems. Yeah, we're going to

927
00:56:23,480 --> 00:56:29,360
Speaker 1: do it. But yeah, I think that right now, there's

928
00:56:29,360 --> 00:56:33,400
Speaker 1: a problem of pricing. Um. One of the things that

929
00:56:33,560 --> 00:56:38,880
Speaker 1: I see is like they'll be prices that will be

930
00:56:39,120 --> 00:56:41,759
Speaker 1: for a game on Kickstarter. There's the price that it

931
00:56:41,960 --> 00:56:44,759
Speaker 1: is in your friendly local game store, and then there's

932
00:56:44,800 --> 00:56:47,439
Speaker 1: the price that it is in Target. And if you're

933
00:56:47,440 --> 00:56:51,160
Speaker 1: a person who has started out buying your games in Target,

934
00:56:51,640 --> 00:56:56,120
Speaker 1: and then you're going to a game store or a convention,

935
00:56:57,000 --> 00:56:59,800
Speaker 1: and maybe you're a little surprised that the prices are higher.

936
00:57:00,360 --> 00:57:03,040
Speaker 1: And it's it's all a matter of scale, right, Like,

937
00:57:03,560 --> 00:57:07,600
Speaker 1: we can't as a small company take the risk of

938
00:57:07,880 --> 00:57:11,880
Speaker 1: printing enough copies that our cost is so low that

939
00:57:12,040 --> 00:57:15,400
Speaker 1: we can sell at lower costs. And I think there's

940
00:57:15,520 --> 00:57:21,040
Speaker 1: sort of um people don't always realize what they're getting

941
00:57:21,080 --> 00:57:23,479
Speaker 1: for their money, what they should be getting for their money,

942
00:57:23,960 --> 00:57:27,120
Speaker 1: and and also on the flip side, what they should

943
00:57:27,160 --> 00:57:31,600
Speaker 1: be charging. Um. As more people get into game design

944
00:57:31,680 --> 00:57:34,360
Speaker 1: and development, they don't know, they don't know what to

945
00:57:34,440 --> 00:57:38,360
Speaker 1: sell their games for, and they'll they'll print, like, you know,

946
00:57:38,680 --> 00:57:41,920
Speaker 1: two hundred page hardcover that they need to sell for

947
00:57:42,080 --> 00:57:45,160
Speaker 1: forty dollars and then it may not do as well.

948
00:57:45,480 --> 00:57:48,320
Speaker 1: And I think that that sort of there are so

949
00:57:48,440 --> 00:57:51,480
Speaker 1: many aspects to the problem. And I think the other

950
00:57:51,640 --> 00:57:56,320
Speaker 1: thing that we are missing as an industry is actionable data.

951
00:57:57,160 --> 00:58:02,360
Speaker 1: We don't have a central organizations that are gathering like

952
00:58:02,680 --> 00:58:07,400
Speaker 1: that pricing data and what it's manufacturing is costing, and

953
00:58:07,880 --> 00:58:12,000
Speaker 1: what is the demographic data depending on genre of game,

954
00:58:12,400 --> 00:58:17,040
Speaker 1: and that's all stuff that really empowers people to make

955
00:58:17,760 --> 00:58:20,640
Speaker 1: the correct choices for the games they want to make.

956
00:58:20,880 --> 00:58:24,760
Speaker 1: And if I could like change anything about the industry

957
00:58:24,920 --> 00:58:29,640
Speaker 1: that didn't have to do with sexism, it would be that, Yeah,

958
00:58:29,760 --> 00:58:32,200
Speaker 1: I would took back a little bit on this quickly.

959
00:58:32,240 --> 00:58:35,840
Speaker 1: On that is so many people consumers, I will say,

960
00:58:36,600 --> 00:58:39,960
Speaker 1: will look at a game the only look at the

961
00:58:40,040 --> 00:58:42,120
Speaker 1: size of the box that the pieces in the box,

962
00:58:42,240 --> 00:58:45,280
Speaker 1: and they'll say that's not worth forty dollars or only

963
00:58:45,400 --> 00:58:48,280
Speaker 1: twenty dollars. But maybe the box is really big, it's

964
00:58:48,320 --> 00:58:51,520
Speaker 1: all full of empty space in there, and it has cars,

965
00:58:51,640 --> 00:58:55,440
Speaker 1: but it's it's only twenty dollars. Whereas box that waller

966
00:58:55,600 --> 00:58:57,640
Speaker 1: that has from the pieces in it and it has

967
00:58:57,840 --> 00:59:02,840
Speaker 1: a long replayability life cycle for forty dollars, so they say, oh,

968
00:59:02,880 --> 00:59:05,200
Speaker 1: that's about that's forty bucks. I'm not saying forty bucks

969
00:59:05,240 --> 00:59:09,880
Speaker 1: for that. And there's just this perceived value. Marketing toys

970
00:59:10,000 --> 00:59:13,000
Speaker 1: has already mess this up for people's brains, all of

971
00:59:13,120 --> 00:59:15,360
Speaker 1: us when all that plastic packaging. I want to see

972
00:59:15,400 --> 00:59:17,200
Speaker 1: all the pieces. I want to know this box is

973
00:59:17,240 --> 00:59:20,439
Speaker 1: really big. I want this cool insert and they don't

974
00:59:20,480 --> 00:59:23,280
Speaker 1: really understand that. The only people that can do that

975
00:59:23,400 --> 00:59:27,840
Speaker 1: and keep that phrase low putting a hundred thousand copies, right, So, uh,

976
00:59:28,440 --> 00:59:32,360
Speaker 1: it is shame for people in the indie roles that

977
00:59:32,680 --> 00:59:36,400
Speaker 1: are making really good games. It's super hard to compete

978
00:59:37,000 --> 00:59:40,080
Speaker 1: at a high level, right, and you get your breakthroughs

979
00:59:40,120 --> 00:59:42,840
Speaker 1: and that's great, and then you usually start doing that

980
00:59:42,960 --> 00:59:45,760
Speaker 1: many so you can actually sell it cheaper. Um, But

981
00:59:45,880 --> 00:59:49,880
Speaker 1: there's there's definitely some of that where um, it's really

982
00:59:49,960 --> 00:59:53,440
Speaker 1: hard to to change people's perspective of perceived value. And

983
00:59:53,560 --> 00:59:56,720
Speaker 1: it doesn't help when the industry is all over the place,

984
00:59:56,880 --> 01:00:00,160
Speaker 1: because uh, we've said it's a couple of times. I

985
01:00:00,280 --> 01:00:01,720
Speaker 1: think christ might have come up with it, or maybe

986
01:00:01,760 --> 01:00:05,520
Speaker 1: somebody else came up with this concept which was gaining.

987
01:00:05,560 --> 01:00:08,040
Speaker 1: The industry is kind of like the Indian music industry,

988
01:00:08,320 --> 01:00:11,520
Speaker 1: right there's a hundred different genres and sub genres and

989
01:00:12,000 --> 01:00:14,120
Speaker 1: things that everybody has their favorite game and they're not

990
01:00:14,240 --> 01:00:18,120
Speaker 1: the same, and there's on many different labels. You can

991
01:00:18,160 --> 01:00:20,800
Speaker 1: also self published. You can play this little show and

992
01:00:20,880 --> 01:00:23,000
Speaker 1: you have a following and you're happy, or you need

993
01:00:23,080 --> 01:00:26,240
Speaker 1: to sell out stadiums, and it's it's very similar and

994
01:00:26,320 --> 01:00:30,280
Speaker 1: chaotic and also run very crazily like the industry of

995
01:00:30,480 --> 01:00:34,520
Speaker 1: the music, where there isn't really hard dad on what's

996
01:00:34,520 --> 01:00:37,240
Speaker 1: going to work because it's taste driven. So you've got

997
01:00:37,280 --> 01:00:40,120
Speaker 1: your taste driven sales that they're going to no matter

998
01:00:40,200 --> 01:00:42,960
Speaker 1: what it costs, and then you've got your perceived value people.

999
01:00:43,080 --> 01:00:45,800
Speaker 1: So that's something I don't know if what the lever change,

1000
01:00:45,840 --> 01:00:49,120
Speaker 1: but I agree that that's tough in our market because

1001
01:00:50,120 --> 01:00:51,920
Speaker 1: some people are who are new are coming into the

1002
01:00:52,000 --> 01:00:57,880
Speaker 1: industry being oh, well, you know, exploding kidneys or whatever

1003
01:00:58,040 --> 01:01:02,400
Speaker 1: my game needs, they can't even make enough money to

1004
01:01:02,480 --> 01:01:05,280
Speaker 1: sell it for So then you see the shame. You

1005
01:01:05,320 --> 01:01:08,439
Speaker 1: see people come out of the gate. They actually lose

1006
01:01:08,520 --> 01:01:10,600
Speaker 1: money on their first kick Starter, they the fold as

1007
01:01:10,640 --> 01:01:13,240
Speaker 1: a company. It's a shame because a lot of these

1008
01:01:13,280 --> 01:01:15,720
Speaker 1: things happen the kind of the same. There's not really

1009
01:01:15,840 --> 01:01:20,120
Speaker 1: data out there, and unfortunately it takes years and years

1010
01:01:20,160 --> 01:01:25,600
Speaker 1: in time to find out about this speration. So while

1011
01:01:25,640 --> 01:01:27,800
Speaker 1: it's great that we are growing as an interest and

1012
01:01:27,840 --> 01:01:29,840
Speaker 1: bringing a lot of new designers, and I'm just worried

1013
01:01:30,080 --> 01:01:32,520
Speaker 1: that so many of them are just gonna has such

1014
01:01:32,560 --> 01:01:39,640
Speaker 1: a hard time. So yeah, that's an issue. Yeah, and

1015
01:01:40,040 --> 01:01:42,320
Speaker 1: how much you can know about it, you know, I mean,

1016
01:01:42,360 --> 01:01:45,520
Speaker 1: the only I wouldn't say far as you know, it

1017
01:01:45,560 --> 01:01:48,360
Speaker 1: seems to me. The other thing we have talked about

1018
01:01:48,400 --> 01:01:52,200
Speaker 1: a lot is representation just in general and games. And

1019
01:01:53,320 --> 01:01:55,240
Speaker 1: I can't say the numbers because there is no data

1020
01:01:55,360 --> 01:01:59,000
Speaker 1: on this, but I would say that probably in the

1021
01:01:59,120 --> 01:02:02,280
Speaker 1: last five year of the say generically, there has been

1022
01:02:02,320 --> 01:02:05,800
Speaker 1: an uptick when I'm looking at games I'm noticing, like, oh,

1023
01:02:06,080 --> 01:02:10,120
Speaker 1: there's three female characters, or this game has a same

1024
01:02:10,160 --> 01:02:12,560
Speaker 1: sex couple in this picture, or look, there's a person

1025
01:02:12,640 --> 01:02:15,640
Speaker 1: of color over here. All of these different things not

1026
01:02:16,720 --> 01:02:19,360
Speaker 1: where we need to be like, because I'm still noticing,

1027
01:02:19,400 --> 01:02:23,320
Speaker 1: I'm three. Look, you know, you know, a good job.

1028
01:02:23,840 --> 01:02:27,240
Speaker 1: You know, there's there's more of that being stolen. At

1029
01:02:27,280 --> 01:02:29,400
Speaker 1: least people are starting to think about it. So maybe

1030
01:02:29,560 --> 01:02:32,200
Speaker 1: in five more years, just because of second nature, hopefully,

1031
01:02:32,760 --> 01:02:36,439
Speaker 1: you know. Yeah, a statistic I found that has been

1032
01:02:36,640 --> 01:02:38,960
Speaker 1: reaffirmed by more than one steady is that you're more

1033
01:02:39,080 --> 01:02:44,040
Speaker 1: likely to find a sheep on the cover art of

1034
01:02:44,280 --> 01:02:47,720
Speaker 1: a tape top game as opposed to a woman. That's

1035
01:02:47,800 --> 01:02:51,800
Speaker 1: that's steady, right. Yeah, And and sometimes some of those

1036
01:02:51,920 --> 01:02:53,800
Speaker 1: some of the pictures of women that are on some

1037
01:02:53,960 --> 01:02:57,640
Speaker 1: of these games are oh gosh, the pictures of women

1038
01:02:57,680 --> 01:03:00,960
Speaker 1: that we do know you are totally correct, you know

1039
01:03:01,000 --> 01:03:03,760
Speaker 1: what I mean, because sometimes because they're there, but it's

1040
01:03:03,840 --> 01:03:06,520
Speaker 1: not in the way that they should be there. Um,

1041
01:03:07,360 --> 01:03:08,960
Speaker 1: you know, one of the things we do. And you know,

1042
01:03:08,960 --> 01:03:11,200
Speaker 1: I didn't think about this because it's so second nature.

1043
01:03:11,240 --> 01:03:13,800
Speaker 1: And Heather Wilson was an advocate for this right off

1044
01:03:13,840 --> 01:03:15,880
Speaker 1: the bats. Riding our cats, which are about cats are

1045
01:03:15,920 --> 01:03:18,880
Speaker 1: not human people. But we made sure that we talked

1046
01:03:18,920 --> 01:03:23,120
Speaker 1: about having at least female representation and they are based

1047
01:03:23,120 --> 01:03:26,360
Speaker 1: off real female physicists, so you know, we did do that.

1048
01:03:26,560 --> 01:03:29,000
Speaker 1: And then a lot of our games we're almost I

1049
01:03:29,040 --> 01:03:31,720
Speaker 1: guess all of our games we've done that where we say, okay,

1050
01:03:31,800 --> 01:03:34,120
Speaker 1: we need to have if we have a male designer

1051
01:03:34,200 --> 01:03:36,360
Speaker 1: on that game, it's got to be a female artist

1052
01:03:36,480 --> 01:03:38,720
Speaker 1: or vice versa. You know, we'll say like if we can,

1053
01:03:38,800 --> 01:03:41,400
Speaker 1: we'll like to get both. If we can't, at least

1054
01:03:41,480 --> 01:03:46,920
Speaker 1: one of those two major things is female. Yeah. Yes,

1055
01:03:47,800 --> 01:03:50,800
Speaker 1: but we try very very hard to do that to

1056
01:03:51,000 --> 01:03:57,439
Speaker 1: introduce diversity into the product itself and into the people

1057
01:03:57,520 --> 01:04:01,920
Speaker 1: that we work lass. Yeah, because we can't instill diversity

1058
01:04:02,040 --> 01:04:04,160
Speaker 1: in them. I mean, we try and make sure that

1059
01:04:04,320 --> 01:04:11,000
Speaker 1: it's right exactly exactly, and you know, I I agree. Um,

1060
01:04:12,120 --> 01:04:14,400
Speaker 1: you know, there's so many games. I still remember the story.

1061
01:04:15,280 --> 01:04:18,160
Speaker 1: It was probably like a six or eight years ago.

1062
01:04:18,520 --> 01:04:22,280
Speaker 1: A guy was bringing in the game and it was

1063
01:04:22,360 --> 01:04:24,560
Speaker 1: of course like ton of adusn't quality game game, and

1064
01:04:24,600 --> 01:04:28,240
Speaker 1: there was six characters and the game was fine. At

1065
01:04:28,280 --> 01:04:31,000
Speaker 1: the end of the game, somebody said why do the

1066
01:04:31,320 --> 01:04:34,120
Speaker 1: white dude, and he said, you know, you never even

1067
01:04:34,200 --> 01:04:37,680
Speaker 1: knew if that. We're like, yep, I'm sure you never did.

1068
01:04:38,040 --> 01:04:39,480
Speaker 1: So it's just this is one of these things that

1069
01:04:39,520 --> 01:04:43,280
Speaker 1: sticks out that is hopefully changing as it gets pointed

1070
01:04:43,320 --> 01:04:45,480
Speaker 1: out more and more and as people like you could

1071
01:04:45,520 --> 01:04:48,840
Speaker 1: advocate for it and designers that want to do it right.

1072
01:04:49,080 --> 01:04:51,040
Speaker 1: And there's more designers in the industry I think now

1073
01:04:51,200 --> 01:04:53,560
Speaker 1: than there was a buck teen years ago that actively

1074
01:04:53,800 --> 01:04:56,920
Speaker 1: want that in their game, so well, you know we're

1075
01:04:56,920 --> 01:05:02,440
Speaker 1: working towards that. Yeah, that's great. I think as more

1076
01:05:02,560 --> 01:05:06,440
Speaker 1: women are, like I am a great example because I

1077
01:05:06,520 --> 01:05:08,720
Speaker 1: was someone who was so intimidated by this world, and

1078
01:05:08,800 --> 01:05:11,080
Speaker 1: then as I've come into it, as I've seen other

1079
01:05:11,160 --> 01:05:14,560
Speaker 1: women do it and talk about it, and seeing all

1080
01:05:14,640 --> 01:05:17,280
Speaker 1: these games that I can play, I have become a

1081
01:05:17,360 --> 01:05:21,480
Speaker 1: big advocate for it. I bought female friends in who

1082
01:05:21,920 --> 01:05:25,040
Speaker 1: are now play games, so I think that's a big

1083
01:05:25,120 --> 01:05:29,080
Speaker 1: piece of it. Do you have any useful advice for

1084
01:05:29,200 --> 01:05:34,280
Speaker 1: women who are getting into tabletop games or who want to,

1085
01:05:34,520 --> 01:05:39,000
Speaker 1: like um, either playing on the playing side or developing side.

1086
01:05:39,920 --> 01:05:41,880
Speaker 1: You still advice as a loaded term. Do you have

1087
01:05:42,000 --> 01:05:45,840
Speaker 1: any advice, take any advice let's stay on the plane. Yeah,

1088
01:05:45,920 --> 01:05:47,880
Speaker 1: let me stay on the playing side, because I would

1089
01:05:47,880 --> 01:05:49,800
Speaker 1: stay on the playing side. And I've also brought a

1090
01:05:49,840 --> 01:05:51,959
Speaker 1: lot of friends in the gaming over the last two years,

1091
01:05:52,480 --> 01:05:55,560
Speaker 1: and a lot of people who also, like your friends,

1092
01:05:55,600 --> 01:05:58,560
Speaker 1: thought they would never play table top game. I would

1093
01:05:58,720 --> 01:06:01,520
Speaker 1: say that if you are someone who's thinking about trying

1094
01:06:01,600 --> 01:06:03,480
Speaker 1: paper cup game and your friends are asked me to

1095
01:06:03,560 --> 01:06:05,919
Speaker 1: go do it, there's two things that you should think about.

1096
01:06:05,920 --> 01:06:09,480
Speaker 1: First of all, go in non judgment because maybe it's

1097
01:06:09,520 --> 01:06:12,360
Speaker 1: not as complex, so crazy or scary as he thought.

1098
01:06:12,680 --> 01:06:15,320
Speaker 1: But also speak up about the kind of games you

1099
01:06:15,360 --> 01:06:17,480
Speaker 1: did like after that game day, because what I'll find

1100
01:06:17,600 --> 01:06:20,960
Speaker 1: is some people will really like the co op Pandemic

1101
01:06:21,040 --> 01:06:24,880
Speaker 1: Tide games, and then they'll hate the Magic two players

1102
01:06:25,360 --> 01:06:28,080
Speaker 1: combat game. And other people will say, you know, I

1103
01:06:28,200 --> 01:06:29,920
Speaker 1: really like this card game where you have to make

1104
01:06:29,920 --> 01:06:33,120
Speaker 1: all these decisions, and they'll they'll find another side of

1105
01:06:33,160 --> 01:06:35,880
Speaker 1: themselves that I didn't even know it was there that's

1106
01:06:35,920 --> 01:06:38,880
Speaker 1: being brought out by the game. And I'm somebody who

1107
01:06:39,040 --> 01:06:42,280
Speaker 1: also I don't need to I like two games and games,

1108
01:06:42,360 --> 01:06:44,440
Speaker 1: but I kind of like the feeling of the game

1109
01:06:44,480 --> 01:06:47,480
Speaker 1: more than the feel of the game. So sometimes you

1110
01:06:47,560 --> 01:06:50,160
Speaker 1: have to look pass back too. I've seen so many

1111
01:06:50,200 --> 01:06:51,680
Speaker 1: people look at the game and go, you know, I

1112
01:06:51,720 --> 01:06:53,800
Speaker 1: don't want to play that. If you didn't hear the roles,

1113
01:06:54,000 --> 01:06:55,959
Speaker 1: we didn't try it yet, I bet you you're gonna

1114
01:06:56,000 --> 01:06:57,800
Speaker 1: like it. I know there's a dragon on the cover,

1115
01:06:57,920 --> 01:06:59,920
Speaker 1: but ignore the dragon and then it's gonna be young.

1116
01:07:00,720 --> 01:07:03,720
Speaker 1: Or I know there's like a scary looking monsters not

1117
01:07:03,880 --> 01:07:07,480
Speaker 1: actually scary. Sometimes, you know, we can't be go with

1118
01:07:07,640 --> 01:07:09,440
Speaker 1: these game insolved a lot of times the mechanics. It

1119
01:07:09,520 --> 01:07:12,560
Speaker 1: looks really fun, and then you'll find through that mechanic, Oh,

1120
01:07:12,600 --> 01:07:14,120
Speaker 1: I like you with this? Are you're looking with this?

1121
01:07:14,400 --> 01:07:17,720
Speaker 1: Or there's also these sixty other games probably right um,

1122
01:07:18,400 --> 01:07:21,120
Speaker 1: which is fun. So I would suggest that it once

1123
01:07:21,120 --> 01:07:23,000
Speaker 1: you do find anything that you can even remotely like,

1124
01:07:23,160 --> 01:07:25,560
Speaker 1: tell your gamer friends but you like that, and they

1125
01:07:25,600 --> 01:07:28,000
Speaker 1: could probably suggest a bunch of our games in that genre.

1126
01:07:29,000 --> 01:07:33,320
Speaker 1: And on the design side, my advice would be find

1127
01:07:34,040 --> 01:07:40,080
Speaker 1: some allies, quickly, find community, look around and see what

1128
01:07:40,320 --> 01:07:43,960
Speaker 1: other women in the world are designing and developing games

1129
01:07:44,240 --> 01:07:48,440
Speaker 1: and contact them, like, contact them via Twitter or Facebook

1130
01:07:48,560 --> 01:07:51,800
Speaker 1: or wherever you find them, meet them at cons, and

1131
01:07:52,440 --> 01:07:57,720
Speaker 1: and build yourself a community of allies who are going

1132
01:07:57,760 --> 01:08:01,400
Speaker 1: to help you feel good about what you're doing and

1133
01:08:01,600 --> 01:08:05,320
Speaker 1: help you remember why you wanted to make games, so

1134
01:08:05,480 --> 01:08:09,680
Speaker 1: that at those times when you feel discouraged, you've got

1135
01:08:09,800 --> 01:08:12,600
Speaker 1: some friends to back you up, you know. And like,

1136
01:08:13,440 --> 01:08:16,400
Speaker 1: find people who are at the stage that you're at,

1137
01:08:16,680 --> 01:08:21,000
Speaker 1: Find people who are newer than you, Find people who've

1138
01:08:21,000 --> 01:08:25,200
Speaker 1: been doing it way longer than you, and and and

1139
01:08:25,439 --> 01:08:29,240
Speaker 1: talk to them, pick their brains and and ask them

1140
01:08:29,280 --> 01:08:33,040
Speaker 1: to be a support for you, and in turn support them. Like,

1141
01:08:33,720 --> 01:08:37,800
Speaker 1: having women in the industry that I'm friends with has

1142
01:08:38,000 --> 01:08:41,960
Speaker 1: made a huge difference for me. Like it it makes

1143
01:08:42,040 --> 01:08:46,000
Speaker 1: me feel like, hey, I belong here to and look

1144
01:08:46,280 --> 01:08:50,040
Speaker 1: so do all these other women. Yeah, and I would

1145
01:08:50,040 --> 01:08:53,400
Speaker 1: say that's definitely true. There's a there's a very part

1146
01:08:53,400 --> 01:08:56,080
Speaker 1: I would say painting it community, meaning that they're over

1147
01:08:56,200 --> 01:08:59,400
Speaker 1: to talking to anyone and any woman that reaches out

1148
01:08:59,439 --> 01:09:02,240
Speaker 1: of them, you know, or anyone actually this which is

1149
01:09:02,320 --> 01:09:06,280
Speaker 1: a little bit good probably talked to. However, um, you know,

1150
01:09:06,360 --> 01:09:08,600
Speaker 1: if you don't know how to go about doing this

1151
01:09:08,640 --> 01:09:11,840
Speaker 1: any you go on to a game convention, you see,

1152
01:09:12,080 --> 01:09:14,560
Speaker 1: oh I see some women at this boot you know,

1153
01:09:14,880 --> 01:09:17,920
Speaker 1: did you guys make these games? I've literally had people

1154
01:09:17,960 --> 01:09:19,840
Speaker 1: come up to me at Evetts and say, oh, is

1155
01:09:19,880 --> 01:09:22,760
Speaker 1: this your company? And then I said yes, and then

1156
01:09:22,800 --> 01:09:25,400
Speaker 1: they say, okay, well, I've just just because at making

1157
01:09:25,560 --> 01:09:27,800
Speaker 1: game and I wanted to ask you the questions, and

1158
01:09:27,880 --> 01:09:29,880
Speaker 1: then I'm giving them my card and pull them to

1159
01:09:29,960 --> 01:09:34,320
Speaker 1: email me. We've had numerous people contect other people and

1160
01:09:34,400 --> 01:09:37,759
Speaker 1: our other women designers or company owners in our group

1161
01:09:38,160 --> 01:09:40,719
Speaker 1: via Twitter or something and say, hey, I just wanted

1162
01:09:40,720 --> 01:09:41,840
Speaker 1: to ask you some of the advice. I didn't know

1163
01:09:41,880 --> 01:09:43,479
Speaker 1: how to els to reach out to, but I knew

1164
01:09:43,479 --> 01:09:45,639
Speaker 1: you did this game or knew you worked in this company,

1165
01:09:46,320 --> 01:09:49,160
Speaker 1: and that's how it started. And now sometimes they're part

1166
01:09:49,200 --> 01:09:51,640
Speaker 1: of our group. You know, it just so happened that

1167
01:09:51,800 --> 01:09:54,519
Speaker 1: that's kind of how it is, because there isn't really

1168
01:09:54,560 --> 01:09:57,559
Speaker 1: a resource, just one resource where you can find everybody.

1169
01:09:57,920 --> 01:10:01,000
Speaker 1: So I think how the decis in this reaching out

1170
01:10:01,439 --> 01:10:04,400
Speaker 1: is email or Twitter is better, uh that than a

1171
01:10:04,520 --> 01:10:07,960
Speaker 1: person great, and they do more than most people will

1172
01:10:07,960 --> 01:10:10,840
Speaker 1: be more than happy to walk through it and give

1173
01:10:10,880 --> 01:10:15,320
Speaker 1: you Resially. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I agree. I think that

1174
01:10:15,520 --> 01:10:19,960
Speaker 1: people who are passionate about something are more than happy

1175
01:10:20,560 --> 01:10:23,439
Speaker 1: to help other people who are passionate about the same thing.

1176
01:10:24,520 --> 01:10:28,679
Speaker 1: What about You've kind of touched this a little bit,

1177
01:10:28,960 --> 01:10:32,439
Speaker 1: but to close out, what about the both of you,

1178
01:10:32,560 --> 01:10:34,879
Speaker 1: do you have any projects on the horizon you're excited

1179
01:10:34,920 --> 01:10:38,200
Speaker 1: about or any other things that you're excited about in

1180
01:10:38,280 --> 01:10:44,719
Speaker 1: this tabletop realm um. Well, Heather Wilson has her first

1181
01:10:45,800 --> 01:10:49,400
Speaker 1: role playing games coming out the spring to be The Excellence,

1182
01:10:49,560 --> 01:10:53,599
Speaker 1: based off of the system that works creating this year

1183
01:10:53,880 --> 01:10:57,799
Speaker 1: because that's exciting. And then I have my first solo

1184
01:10:58,080 --> 01:11:03,200
Speaker 1: design for game come out in probably early summer called

1185
01:11:03,280 --> 01:11:05,960
Speaker 1: Reeople Party, which is a co op game about a

1186
01:11:06,040 --> 01:11:09,000
Speaker 1: party and they're all little meeples like from Carcophones, the

1187
01:11:09,040 --> 01:11:12,880
Speaker 1: little guys and uh, they'll have different personalities and you

1188
01:11:12,960 --> 01:11:16,720
Speaker 1: move them around that try to take khotos very non

1189
01:11:16,840 --> 01:11:20,479
Speaker 1: violent theme, but it's co op and and I'm hoping

1190
01:11:20,560 --> 01:11:23,439
Speaker 1: that that really resonates well with a woman audience. And

1191
01:11:23,520 --> 01:11:25,960
Speaker 1: I think, how excellent shill as well, because you want

1192
01:11:25,960 --> 01:11:30,439
Speaker 1: to go over with that. So The Excellence is a

1193
01:11:30,600 --> 01:11:34,680
Speaker 1: role playing game in which you are a princess and

1194
01:11:34,800 --> 01:11:38,200
Speaker 1: you're not the term princess is not gendered in this game.

1195
01:11:38,479 --> 01:11:41,960
Speaker 1: You just you're a princess of a thing like you can't.

1196
01:11:42,160 --> 01:11:44,479
Speaker 1: It can't be generally, you can't be like the Princess

1197
01:11:44,640 --> 01:11:47,360
Speaker 1: of music, but it needs to be specific, like you're

1198
01:11:47,479 --> 01:11:50,519
Speaker 1: the princess of sad country songs or something like that.

1199
01:11:50,840 --> 01:11:55,160
Speaker 1: And each session is played like an adventure, like an

1200
01:11:55,240 --> 01:11:58,320
Speaker 1: eighties or nineties cartoon, where you know you've got a

1201
01:11:58,360 --> 01:12:01,200
Speaker 1: thing that you're trying to get, but really the goal

1202
01:12:01,360 --> 01:12:04,320
Speaker 1: is just to be better friends. And it's a lot

1203
01:12:04,400 --> 01:12:08,120
Speaker 1: of fun. And one thing that I'm excited that Heather

1204
01:12:08,400 --> 01:12:11,880
Speaker 1: is working on is um a game that we've been

1205
01:12:11,960 --> 01:12:14,639
Speaker 1: wanting to make for a while, which is Pavlov's Dogs,

1206
01:12:14,920 --> 01:12:18,920
Speaker 1: and she ran through a number of design iterations and

1207
01:12:19,000 --> 01:12:22,320
Speaker 1: it just kept getting better. So we're getting a lot

1208
01:12:22,479 --> 01:12:26,320
Speaker 1: closer to getting it to the point where we'll think

1209
01:12:26,360 --> 01:12:28,400
Speaker 1: about how we want to bring it to market. So

1210
01:12:28,479 --> 01:12:33,160
Speaker 1: I'm excited about that. And I'm also excited about a

1211
01:12:33,400 --> 01:12:36,400
Speaker 1: card game that I'm working on, which it was going

1212
01:12:36,439 --> 01:12:38,840
Speaker 1: to be called Alpha Birds, but there's another game out

1213
01:12:38,880 --> 01:12:43,920
Speaker 1: there called Alpha Birds, so we were calling we've tentatively

1214
01:12:44,000 --> 01:12:47,519
Speaker 1: been calling it Numb to Plume, and I made a

1215
01:12:47,640 --> 01:12:49,880
Speaker 1: little bit of a breakthrough with the design a few

1216
01:12:49,920 --> 01:12:52,600
Speaker 1: months ago, and so I'm excited to move forward with

1217
01:12:52,760 --> 01:12:55,880
Speaker 1: that and get it closer to uh, you know where

1218
01:12:55,920 --> 01:12:58,599
Speaker 1: we would want people to be playing it. So I'm

1219
01:12:58,680 --> 01:13:02,479
Speaker 1: just I'm excited about every thing we're doing. Oh I

1220
01:13:02,560 --> 01:13:05,160
Speaker 1: am too, I want to play all these things. Yeah. Yeah.

1221
01:13:05,360 --> 01:13:07,120
Speaker 1: We just got together last weekend and had like to

1222
01:13:07,240 --> 01:13:10,360
Speaker 1: be like planning session for the years. So we're all

1223
01:13:10,400 --> 01:13:14,960
Speaker 1: soaked up right now. Yeah, and we we came up

1224
01:13:15,000 --> 01:13:19,280
Speaker 1: with some nice like like guidelines for for I mean,

1225
01:13:19,360 --> 01:13:22,320
Speaker 1: it's something we've always done, right, Heather and I and

1226
01:13:22,680 --> 01:13:27,639
Speaker 1: Chris have very much been in sync in the kinds

1227
01:13:27,680 --> 01:13:30,639
Speaker 1: of games that we want to make without ever really

1228
01:13:30,840 --> 01:13:35,720
Speaker 1: articulating it. So we sat down and we started to articulate, like, Okay, well,

1229
01:13:36,000 --> 01:13:39,000
Speaker 1: how do we define the types of games we make?

1230
01:13:39,400 --> 01:13:42,120
Speaker 1: And it was so cool because it was like, oh, yeah,

1231
01:13:42,360 --> 01:13:44,760
Speaker 1: this is exactly what we've been doing all along, and

1232
01:13:45,040 --> 01:13:47,240
Speaker 1: we just put some words to it. So it was

1233
01:13:47,479 --> 01:13:52,360
Speaker 1: it was great. Oh I love it. I'm so excited

1234
01:13:52,520 --> 01:13:56,360
Speaker 1: to see what the both of you do in the future.

1235
01:13:56,760 --> 01:14:00,320
Speaker 1: M I'm a big fan. Like I said, so thank you.

1236
01:14:00,600 --> 01:14:04,719
Speaker 1: I'm very excited and I'm so glad that that both

1237
01:14:04,800 --> 01:14:09,720
Speaker 1: of you joined us for this episode. Um, where can

1238
01:14:10,240 --> 01:14:16,120
Speaker 1: people find you? Well? They can find us on Twitter

1239
01:14:16,560 --> 01:14:20,880
Speaker 1: and Instagram at ninth Level Games and that's nine the

1240
01:14:20,960 --> 01:14:26,160
Speaker 1: numeral Um, and we're on Facebook as well, and then

1241
01:14:26,400 --> 01:14:30,680
Speaker 1: personally you can find me on Twitter at Reindeer b

1242
01:14:31,880 --> 01:14:35,519
Speaker 1: and then my my personal Twitter is at cat Businesses

1243
01:14:36,520 --> 01:14:39,920
Speaker 1: and you can check out everything pretty much. We have

1244
01:14:40,000 --> 01:14:44,000
Speaker 1: everything on our website that we're working through early right now,

1245
01:14:44,160 --> 01:14:48,240
Speaker 1: so that's ninth Level, nine d level dot com and

1246
01:14:48,360 --> 01:14:50,240
Speaker 1: we've got a couple of those things growing up. You

1247
01:14:50,320 --> 01:14:53,439
Speaker 1: can get some concepts of what we're working on there. Awesome. Well,

1248
01:14:53,600 --> 01:14:56,840
Speaker 1: thank you both so much for for doing this and

1249
01:14:57,040 --> 01:14:59,320
Speaker 1: for doing it after hours. I know you have another job.

1250
01:15:00,000 --> 01:15:02,680
Speaker 1: I appreciate a lot, and uh, like I said, I'm

1251
01:15:02,680 --> 01:15:06,400
Speaker 1: a big fan, so this was exciting for me. Thank

1252
01:15:06,439 --> 01:15:12,200
Speaker 1: you so much for has been awesome. Yeah, that brings

1253
01:15:12,280 --> 01:15:15,919
Speaker 1: us to the end of this super special Bonus Interview episode.

1254
01:15:16,400 --> 01:15:19,320
Speaker 1: Thanks again to both of the Heathers for joining us,

1255
01:15:19,400 --> 01:15:21,720
Speaker 1: and thanks to Tracy V. Wilson for putting me in

1256
01:15:21,840 --> 01:15:24,920
Speaker 1: touch with them. I really want to play some games now.

1257
01:15:25,520 --> 01:15:27,760
Speaker 1: As you might have noticed, some things are changing here

1258
01:15:27,840 --> 01:15:30,719
Speaker 1: at stuff I never told you since Bridget is moving

1259
01:15:30,760 --> 01:15:34,720
Speaker 1: on to other projects and we all miss her. So much,

1260
01:15:34,760 --> 01:15:36,640
Speaker 1: and I'm so excited for her and see what she

1261
01:15:36,760 --> 01:15:39,080
Speaker 1: will do. We'll keep you posted on what she's up

1262
01:15:39,120 --> 01:15:40,640
Speaker 1: to you and with any like you'll hear from her

1263
01:15:40,680 --> 01:15:43,760
Speaker 1: again soon on this very show. We're working on some

1264
01:15:43,920 --> 01:15:46,600
Speaker 1: cool things and making more new content and trying to

1265
01:15:46,720 --> 01:15:48,559
Speaker 1: nail down the format and the voice, and I can't

1266
01:15:48,600 --> 01:15:51,200
Speaker 1: wait to share that stuff with you. In the meantime,

1267
01:15:51,280 --> 01:15:54,479
Speaker 1: I can't express enough how much I appreciate all of

1268
01:15:54,560 --> 01:15:58,080
Speaker 1: you listeners and your support and your patients, And thanks

1269
01:15:58,160 --> 01:16:02,000
Speaker 1: as always to our produced through Andrew Howard, and thank

1270
01:16:02,040 --> 01:16:12,120
Speaker 1: you again for listening. H