Speaker 1: Text technology with tech Stuff from stuff works dot Com.
Speaker 1: Hey there, and welcome to tex Stuff. I'm your host,
Speaker 1: Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer here at how Stuff Works,
Speaker 1: and you guys know me. You know what I do
Speaker 1: for a living talk about technology. I'm the best of
Speaker 1: what I do, and what I do isn't pretty. I can't.
Speaker 1: I can't back up either of those things. I want
Speaker 1: to take a little departure from the way we normally
Speaker 1: do text stuff. I've got an interview that I'm gonna
Speaker 1: insert into this episode, and today I'm going to talk
Speaker 1: about the process of making a board game. Now, I
Speaker 1: know that's kind of a step away from what I
Speaker 1: normally do, but but stick with me. I promise you that,
Speaker 1: at least to me, it's really interesting and I hope
Speaker 1: it will be for you as well. Later on this episode,
Speaker 1: i'll have that interview. It's gonna be with a couple
Speaker 1: of folks from Mondo. That's a company that has done
Speaker 1: a lot of pop culture merchandizing, posters, artwork, and all albums,
Speaker 1: whole bunch of different stuff. But they've also recently published
Speaker 1: a board game that's based off a true classic. In
Speaker 1: my mind, it is John Carpenter's remake of The Thing
Speaker 1: spoiler alert. I am a big fan of that film. Now.
Speaker 1: I know some of you are thinking board games are
Speaker 1: more than a little bit of a reach for tech stuff,
Speaker 1: but I argue that it still counts. It may, in
Speaker 1: your mind, stretch the meaning of technology a little bit,
Speaker 1: as most board games require very little in the form
Speaker 1: of tech. If we're being really strict with the definition
Speaker 1: of technology, however, then I would say that board games
Speaker 1: totally count because what technology is is the practical application
Speaker 1: of knowledge in a particular area. Practical application of knowledge.
Speaker 1: Technology is the embodiment of the things we learned. So
Speaker 1: when you look at technology, it is proof that science works. Right,
Speaker 1: that we understand that science and engineering these are are
Speaker 1: scientific disp lens that then can have this practical application
Speaker 1: and technology. If science didn't work, our technology wouldn't work.
Speaker 1: And I guess this is where we insert lots of
Speaker 1: jokes about Blue Screen of Death, but you get what
Speaker 1: I'm saying, Like, if we didn't have science under a
Speaker 1: good understanding, then there's no way we would have all
Speaker 1: the stuff that we've got, the stuff what beeps, and
Speaker 1: I certainly wouldn't have a show. Now I argue that
Speaker 1: a board game represents that it is a practical application
Speaker 1: of our understanding of human psychology and also of game theory,
Speaker 1: and at least in some types of games, the relationship
Speaker 1: between strategic decision making and random events. Now, first we
Speaker 1: have to acknowledge that not all board games are equal. Right.
Speaker 1: Some games rely way more heavily upon strategy than other
Speaker 1: types of games. Chess, for example, is a strategic game.
Speaker 1: There are no elements of random chance in chess. All
Speaker 1: moves are stemming from player decisions. All the pieces have
Speaker 1: very specific ways they hand and cannot move, and how
Speaker 1: they can take other pieces. And while one player cannot
Speaker 1: predict the moves made by his or her opponent, none
Speaker 1: of the moves that are made in a game are
Speaker 1: truly random. They are the result of choices made by
Speaker 1: the players. Now, on the flip side of that is
Speaker 1: a game like candy Land. Now there's no strategy, and
Speaker 1: candy Land all moves are dictated by a deck of
Speaker 1: cards which acts sort of like a random number generator,
Speaker 1: and drawing a card reveals a color which tells the
Speaker 1: respective player where to move his or her player piece.
Speaker 1: The outcome of the game is completely up to the
Speaker 1: whims of chance, which is why my niece can beat
Speaker 1: me every single time. It's not really true. My niece
Speaker 1: is three years old. She can also beat me in
Speaker 1: trivial pursuit. I am not proud of this fact, but
Speaker 1: she is a very intelligent young lady. Candy Land is
Speaker 1: a game meant to entertain young kids and teach them
Speaker 1: about rules. It's kind of a gateway game, if you will. Now,
Speaker 1: many games combine elements of both strategy and random chance.
Speaker 1: If one wishes to get philosophical, you can say, well,
Speaker 1: that's a lot like life, right. Some people do really
Speaker 1: well in life despite facing adversity because they make incredibly
Speaker 1: wise decisions. So while chance might be against them, they
Speaker 1: are capable of making very good decisions and coming out
Speaker 1: on top. Anyway, other people might do really well in
Speaker 1: life despite their foolish choices, just because they happen to
Speaker 1: be very lucky. Or you know, if you're a Jedi who,
Speaker 1: in your experience does not believe in luck, maybe you
Speaker 1: would just say coincidence just happens to favor that person
Speaker 1: by chance alone. For many games, you need a really
Speaker 1: good balance of luck and skill to do well. Consistently,
Speaker 1: which can be both really exhilarating and also very frustrating.
Speaker 1: If you were an expert poker player, then you might
Speaker 1: get frustrated that occasionally you just get some bad beats,
Speaker 1: like you just get some bad hands, and the person
Speaker 1: that you're playing against get some really good hands, And
Speaker 1: it may be that you're a much better poker player
Speaker 1: than they are, and yet they're still winning. That's part
Speaker 1: of the game. Now, there are some broad categories of
Speaker 1: board games out there, including some card games, and they
Speaker 1: have varying emphasis on luck versus skill, and I thought
Speaker 1: it might be helpful to kind of do a rundown
Speaker 1: on the different types of games that are out there
Speaker 1: and give some examples of each for the purposes of
Speaker 1: this entire conversation. Now, first we have the racing games
Speaker 1: or the classic board games genre, and these are the
Speaker 1: games that rely heavily on chance. So, like Candy land
Speaker 1: I just mentioned, typically the goal in this game is
Speaker 1: to be the first player to reach a finish line
Speaker 1: of some kind. But nearly all the moves you make
Speaker 1: in these sort of games are dependent upon some sort
Speaker 1: of random event, So that might be rolling a die
Speaker 1: or a pair of dice, or maybe more depending on
Speaker 1: the game, or spinning a dial or drawing a card,
Speaker 1: or you know, that little popper that you might have
Speaker 1: in some games. Other games that fall into this category
Speaker 1: include stuff like snakes and ladders or shoots and ladders
Speaker 1: if you prefer or sorry uh. Those games are largely
Speaker 1: social in nature. The value of the game mostly comes
Speaker 1: from the interactions you have with the people around you,
Speaker 1: and they tend to be kind of like family bonding experiences.
Speaker 1: But there's not a whole lot of satisfaction in the
Speaker 1: game itself, because again it's mostly due to random chance.
Speaker 1: There's not really anything you can do to improve your
Speaker 1: chances of winning in those type type of games. On
Speaker 1: the flip side of that would be the abstract strategy games. Now,
Speaker 1: these are the games in which you are playing some
Speaker 1: form of strategic combat in an abstract way against your opponent.
Speaker 1: Checkers and chess both fall into that category. Your goal
Speaker 1: is to outthink and outmaneuver your opponent. Random elements are
Speaker 1: almost always absent or reduced to the most minor factor
Speaker 1: in these types of games. These are also some of
Speaker 1: the games that have been solved by computers. Not all
Speaker 1: of them have, but Checkers, for example, has been solved.
Speaker 1: And when we say solved, we mean that the we
Speaker 1: have worked out algorithms that prove that you can either
Speaker 1: always win or always come to a draw based upon
Speaker 1: when you play if you assume that both players in
Speaker 1: a game are playing perfectly. So, for example, and Connect four,
Speaker 1: if you are the first person to play a move,
Speaker 1: and you and your opponent both play absolutely perfectly, you're
Speaker 1: gonna win, right like, That's just the way it works.
Speaker 1: Tic tac toe. If you both play perfectly, you're gonna
Speaker 1: draw every time. This is, of course, again assuming perfect play.
Speaker 1: Not every game has a solution, or at least not
Speaker 1: every game have we worked out the solution. Some games,
Speaker 1: like chess are very complicated, and we may find out
Speaker 1: that there is no solution, or that it's might may
Speaker 1: just take a really long time before we're ever able
Speaker 1: to come up with It gets pretty complicated with games
Speaker 1: where you've got pieces that can move and reverse their
Speaker 1: movements and not just move in one direction. Then we
Speaker 1: have the euros style games. Sometimes these are called German
Speaker 1: board games. These games are slightly less abstract than the
Speaker 1: previous category, but not as detailed or grand as strategy games.
Speaker 1: Which I'll describe in a little bit. These games have
Speaker 1: really strong themes that find their way into game mechanics.
Speaker 1: So whereas you might say candy Land, the theme is
Speaker 1: very much it's it's very surface level. There's not really
Speaker 1: anything about the candy Land game that translates into game
Speaker 1: mechanics for the most part. Same thing with Sorry. But
Speaker 1: there are other games in the in the eurostyle where
Speaker 1: the theme is very much tied in with the game
Speaker 1: mechanics and the way the game unfolds. There's typically some
Speaker 1: kind of resource management factored into those types of games,
Speaker 1: and typically players are in the game for the duration
Speaker 1: of play. You don't typically see German board games or
Speaker 1: eurostyle games that knock players out before the end of
Speaker 1: the game comes about. Everyone's in it to win it
Speaker 1: all the way to the end, and often there are
Speaker 1: some sort of score ring elements that will allow someone
Speaker 1: to win even if they appeared to be lagging behind
Speaker 1: the others. You might have some secret elements to it
Speaker 1: where you have a goal and if you reach that
Speaker 1: goal you get bonus points, which means you could end
Speaker 1: up winning the game. When it looked like from just
Speaker 1: a casual glance you were in the last place. There's
Speaker 1: a really strong emphasis on eurostyle games on strategy, so
Speaker 1: random elements are typically limited to where resources might be
Speaker 1: found or other minor elements in the game, but most
Speaker 1: game events are dependent upon the choices of the players
Speaker 1: in the game, and those games also frequently allow players
Speaker 1: to make temporary alliances as the game progresses. The games
Speaker 1: in this category include things like Settlers of Catan or Carcassone.
Speaker 1: Those are two very popular German board game or eurostyle
Speaker 1: game out there, so if you're familiar with either of those,
Speaker 1: you know what I'm talking about. Strategy games take elements
Speaker 1: both from abstract strategy games like Chess and eurostyle games
Speaker 1: like Settlers of Catan, and then combine them into really deep, rich,
Speaker 1: and often really complicated games. Sometimes their war games are
Speaker 1: military based. These tend to be gamers games, meaning they
Speaker 1: frequently have more complicated game mechanics that appeal to experienced
Speaker 1: gamers and require a lot more explanation or maybe multiple
Speaker 1: play throughs to really gain a good sense of how
Speaker 1: the rules work. The board game rules and narrative often
Speaker 1: drive the action, and they might include both competitive and
Speaker 1: cooperative play, often within the same play session, and there
Speaker 1: can be metal level playing in this game. In other words,
Speaker 1: the game isn't just happening on the board, it's also
Speaker 1: happening within the interactions between players outside of the confines
Speaker 1: of the game itself. You might find yourself actively trying
Speaker 1: to deceive other players as to the relative strength of
Speaker 1: your position. So you might be bluffing, trying to make
Speaker 1: them think that you're in a better position than you
Speaker 1: really are, or you could be doing the opposite. You
Speaker 1: could be downplaying or position in order to lull them
Speaker 1: into a false sense of security, and then you spring
Speaker 1: the trap and they go all Admiral Akbar on you.
Speaker 1: These games also can take a really long time, sometimes
Speaker 1: several hours for a play session, depending on how complicated
Speaker 1: game is. Risk Is a style of this Civilization board game,
Speaker 1: is the style of this a Boal Star Galactica, and
Speaker 1: also the thing which we'll be talking about later. All
Speaker 1: of these kind of fall into this very large category,
Speaker 1: though obviously each of those games has very different elements
Speaker 1: from the others, So while they all kind of belong
Speaker 1: to the same category, that doesn't mean they're game mechanics
Speaker 1: are necessarily similar. They're not. They're also card based games.
Speaker 1: There are several different categories of these. Strategy based card
Speaker 1: games still involve an element of luck, since you can't
Speaker 1: predict which cards are going to end up in your hand.
Speaker 1: You typically in these games will draw a certain number
Speaker 1: of cards from a deck. Players usually play from the
Speaker 1: same pool of cards, so it's not like you have
Speaker 1: your own deck and they have their's. You're both playing
Speaker 1: from the same one. These games also tend to have
Speaker 1: a theme, though the extent to which that theme plays
Speaker 1: a part in gameplay will vary. Some examples in this
Speaker 1: include Munchkin or Seven Wonders. Then you've got deck building games,
Speaker 1: in which players build out a deck from a common
Speaker 1: pool of cards. Players may have to do something in
Speaker 1: order to earn cards while building their respective decks, such
Speaker 1: as purchasing individual cards within the game itself, using some
Speaker 1: sort of end game currency not real money, or by
Speaker 1: completing certain in game tasks. Games like Dominion and Corriers
Speaker 1: fall into this category. Then you've got trading card games.
Speaker 1: These are the games in which players build their individual
Speaker 1: decks based on purchasing packs of cards. Typically, in these
Speaker 1: style of games, you would buy a starter deck that
Speaker 1: would have a good distribution of basic cards and then
Speaker 1: you would supplement that with booster packs. So you go
Speaker 1: out and buy booster packs to add more variety to
Speaker 1: your cards and add more capabilities. Some of those booster
Speaker 1: packs could contain particularly rare or powerful cards, and then
Speaker 1: players would go up against each other using these cards,
Speaker 1: kind of dueling one another in an attempt to win
Speaker 1: a match, and typically that involves each player having an
Speaker 1: assigned number of points kind of like health points or
Speaker 1: hit points, and the other players trying to whittle that
Speaker 1: down to zero. So the first player to hit zero
Speaker 1: is out. So if you knock your opponent down to
Speaker 1: zero and they're out, then you win. Games like Magic
Speaker 1: the Gathering or Hearthstone, which is a video game version
Speaker 1: of that style of card game, fall into that category.
Speaker 1: And there are more social games out there. These games
Speaker 1: are where your Apples to Apples or Cards against Humanity
Speaker 1: will fall a million dollars. But is another social game
Speaker 1: that's out there. And there are games that rely upon
Speaker 1: expressions of creativity, such as pictionary or cranium. And then
Speaker 1: there are games that rely heavily upon knowledge, whether it's
Speaker 1: general or specific, like Trivial Pursuit or one of the
Speaker 1: many themed trivia games that are out there, and that's
Speaker 1: just a quick rundown the basic types of board game
Speaker 1: and card games out there, excluding the more traditional card
Speaker 1: games like poker or whist or bridge and things like that.
Speaker 1: Each game requires designers to make very careful decisions to
Speaker 1: ensure that the gameplay is fun and challenging without being
Speaker 1: too frustrating or obtuse. And this is actually a pretty
Speaker 1: tricky path to follow. Sometimes you just don't know if
Speaker 1: a game mechanic is going to work until you actually
Speaker 1: put players into the situation and see how it unfolds.
Speaker 1: If the players seem confused about the mechanic or they
Speaker 1: failed to use it properly, it could be an indication
Speaker 1: that you need to tweak that element so that it's
Speaker 1: more easily understood. Now, most games require a lot of
Speaker 1: workshopping or play testing to get right. In fact, the
Speaker 1: game of chess was created over the course of centuries.
Speaker 1: It seems apparent that the early form of the game
Speaker 1: arose along the Silk Road. And I'm talking about the
Speaker 1: real silk Road, not the black market on the deep web.
Speaker 1: I'm talking about the pathways that merchants traveled more than
Speaker 1: a thousand years ago when they were trading between cities,
Speaker 1: so chess likely evolved from similar games that were played
Speaker 1: in China, India, and Persia among other players places. So
Speaker 1: players would bring up boards and pieces and incorporate rules
Speaker 1: from their different cultures and their different travels into a
Speaker 1: single game, and so the game of chess evolved over
Speaker 1: time this way. It wasn't until the Renaissance that the
Speaker 1: modern rules of chess really began to emerge. My point
Speaker 1: here is that even games like chess went through a
Speaker 1: lot of play testing, so this is not new now.
Speaker 1: To get a better handle on what it's like designing
Speaker 1: a game, I spoke with Jay Shaw and Joe Van
Speaker 1: wetter Ing of Mando about making a game adaptation of
Speaker 1: the nineteen two John Carpenter film The Thing. We'll listen
Speaker 1: to that interview right after the short break. To thank
Speaker 1: our sponsor, I'm really fortunate today to be joined by
Speaker 1: a couple of guys over at Mondo really worked on
Speaker 1: this game to make it what it was. And so, gentlemen,
Speaker 1: if you would please introduce yourselves to the throngs of
Speaker 1: listeners of tech stuff and uh and let us know
Speaker 1: what it was that you did in regards to developing
Speaker 1: this game. All right, Joe, you go first. Yeah. Sure.
Speaker 1: My name's Joe Van Lettering and I'm the game designer.
Speaker 1: There you go, keep it sweet. Uh. My name is
Speaker 1: Jay Shaw. I'm a creative director at Mondo, and I
Speaker 1: helped Joe. I like it. I like it. You know,
Speaker 1: it's great because it's it's an accurate description of what
Speaker 1: you've done, and yet gives us very little information to
Speaker 1: go on at the very beginning, very much like being
Speaker 1: in the thing, right, we were going to dig down
Speaker 1: and discover in this process. And actually my first question
Speaker 1: before we get into the mechanics of the game and
Speaker 1: the development of the game is it's just the question
Speaker 1: of why why John Carpenter's the thing? What was it? They? Where?
Speaker 1: When did that idea kind of come into being about
Speaker 1: developing a game based upon this classic film, which, by
Speaker 1: the way, I actually I love that movie, so I'm
Speaker 1: not being at all facetious here. Oh yeah, everybody loves it.
Speaker 1: Um Yeah, it was interesting. I I started thinking about
Speaker 1: doing board games of Mondo a few years ago and
Speaker 1: just really kind of a as a fan of board
Speaker 1: games type of thing where I said, man, it would
Speaker 1: be really cool if we did a board game. That'd
Speaker 1: be nice. We have no idea how to make a
Speaker 1: board game, but it would be cool to do. And
Speaker 1: that conversation just kept coming up at the office. It
Speaker 1: kept coming up in phone calls and creative meetings and
Speaker 1: just saying, yeah, I wish we did a board game.
Speaker 1: I wish we did a board game. And finally it
Speaker 1: went from which we did a board game too, we
Speaker 1: should do a board game. Let's find somebody who knows
Speaker 1: how to do it. Um. So, you know, the thing
Speaker 1: was honestly the first game that I thought of, because
Speaker 1: the movie is perfect for it. It's a it's a
Speaker 1: it's a confined area much like a board. You've got
Speaker 1: to you know, you've got a set group of people,
Speaker 1: You've got conditions that feel very much like a game
Speaker 1: of sorts. You know, it already kind of felt like
Speaker 1: it was it didn't seem like it took a lot
Speaker 1: to get that story from movie to board. So yeah,
Speaker 1: I've reached out to Joe and started talking to him,
Speaker 1: and you know, I'm lucky that he design board games
Speaker 1: for a living. So that was really the genesis of
Speaker 1: it was just this should be something we should do.
Speaker 1: Let's do it. It's really cool because, as you say,
Speaker 1: the story of the movie does lend itself to certain
Speaker 1: game mechanics. There are certain games that that exist that
Speaker 1: have some similarity to the mechanics in the thing. Uh,
Speaker 1: you know, nothing that is a one to one certainly,
Speaker 1: but there's there's certain ones that I kind of recognize,
Speaker 1: Like there are elements to the game were Wolf. For
Speaker 1: some people play it as afia the idea that you're
Speaker 1: playing in a group. Some people in the group are
Speaker 1: working at counter purposes for what the rest of the
Speaker 1: group is trying to do, and meanwhile, the rest of
Speaker 1: the group has no idea who they can trust and
Speaker 1: who they cannot trust. Uh. The thing actually goes a
Speaker 1: little bit further because even if you are on the
Speaker 1: side of the thing, if you are one of the
Speaker 1: the the compromised characters, you don't necessarily know if anyone
Speaker 1: else is also compromised. So it makes it makes it
Speaker 1: a little more tricky when you're trying to figure out
Speaker 1: who you're trying to sabotage. But generally speaking, this is
Speaker 1: one of those asymmetric games where you have two groups.
Speaker 1: Originally it'll be I assume in individual versus the rest
Speaker 1: of the group working at cross purposes, and as the
Speaker 1: game unfolds, that dynamic continues to change. And obviously, in
Speaker 1: order for you to have any sort of competitiveness in
Speaker 1: this game, that means you have to make really careful
Speaker 1: decisions about what the capabilities are of one group versus
Speaker 1: the other. So, with all of that in mind, the
Speaker 1: idea that you've got this hidden character who's working to
Speaker 1: try and sabotage the rest of the group, I assumed
Speaker 1: that meant that there was a lot of experimentation during
Speaker 1: the entire design process to get that balance right. I mean,
Speaker 1: you don't want you don't want the thing to be
Speaker 1: so easy to defeat that the game is over in
Speaker 1: ten minutes. But you don't want to make it so
Speaker 1: difficult that there's maybe only a two percent chance that
Speaker 1: everyone's going to get out, or even that a significant
Speaker 1: number of people are going to get out. So take
Speaker 1: me through. Now, you've made the decision to turn the
Speaker 1: story of the Thing into a board game, and as
Speaker 1: you've laid out the elements of the story lend itself
Speaker 1: to that, where was the next step? What we're How
Speaker 1: did you start to lay out the process of building
Speaker 1: the game itself? Yes, so we first of all, I
Speaker 1: watched the movie about one hundred times and just tried
Speaker 1: to get a feel for every single aspect of the
Speaker 1: movie and what feels right, what what's the storyline going
Speaker 1: to be within the game, how does that translate? And
Speaker 1: then I just started with a very very simple hidden
Speaker 1: hitt and identity game, you know, just kind of like
Speaker 1: a pass fail that's it, almost like a Mafia or Werewolf.
Speaker 1: And then kind of took that base and brought in
Speaker 1: parts from the movie, you know, brought in the outpost,
Speaker 1: probably the flamethrower, that kind of stuff, and just kind
Speaker 1: of built it out. And I'm going to tell you
Speaker 1: right now, designing a hidden identity game is extremely tough
Speaker 1: because I already have all the information here, right So
Speaker 1: when I'm designing it, trying to go through a game
Speaker 1: plan just by myself in my head, it's tough because
Speaker 1: I already know all the information, that's what this game
Speaker 1: is about. So I got a lot of help from
Speaker 1: some co workers, some friends, lots of play testers just
Speaker 1: to you know, see how do you play this game?
Speaker 1: You know, what do you do at this point? So
Speaker 1: it was a hard process, but I feel pretty good
Speaker 1: with the results. Yeah, there were a lot of There
Speaker 1: was a lot of testing, and I remember when as
Speaker 1: Joe was coming up with kind of these different iterations
Speaker 1: of the game, we would he he'd give us a
Speaker 1: chance to play it and say, here's here's sort of
Speaker 1: a white box version of this. Why don't you guys
Speaker 1: try it out and see what happens. We actually went
Speaker 1: out to San Diego a couple of times to play
Speaker 1: with play with that team, and it was really it
Speaker 1: was interesting because we play it, we'd all kind of go, yeah,
Speaker 1: this is good, we like it. This is a lot
Speaker 1: of fun. But you could almost tell the Joe Joe
Speaker 1: go yeah, this isn't there yet, this isn't working. I
Speaker 1: don't I don't like the flow, I don't like the pace,
Speaker 1: I don't like the length of the game. I don't
Speaker 1: like how this plays with six people. I don't like
Speaker 1: how this plays with eight people. So it was just
Speaker 1: over and over and over again, tweaking and tweaking and
Speaker 1: tweaking until you know it's it's funny because little element
Speaker 1: to get removed and it changes the entire game, Like
Speaker 1: how do you decide who the captain is? Well, if
Speaker 1: you do it this way, the game is really long.
Speaker 1: And it takes it's just, you know, too much downtime
Speaker 1: for people. Well what if you do this, Oh cool,
Speaker 1: this makes it a lot easier. This is a better flow.
Speaker 1: So it was it was it was really kind of
Speaker 1: cool to watch from the outside of it for the
Speaker 1: development process to see how how tricky these things are
Speaker 1: and how how tough it is to get the perfect
Speaker 1: balance so that you've got that like really good game experience, Right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I imagine that. It's it's similar in ways to I
Speaker 1: used to play D n D quite a bit in
Speaker 1: my youth, and I would game master and you design
Speaker 1: really cool scenarios and you're thinking, oh, man, when they
Speaker 1: go down this hallway, it's gonna be so great because
Speaker 1: you know everything and you just assume you know how
Speaker 1: it's going to work. And then they're like, yeah, we're
Speaker 1: gonna take a right. But there's and such same sort
Speaker 1: of thing, like you you have to it's I understand
Speaker 1: exactly what you were saying, Joe. It's it's very difficult
Speaker 1: to simulate ignorance so that you can understand what how
Speaker 1: the gameplay elements will actually unfold in real situation. So
Speaker 1: tell me a little bit about how the game actually works.
Speaker 1: So for those who are not familiar with the thing,
Speaker 1: it is set in an outpost. Uh. It is completely
Speaker 1: secluded from all civilization. There's no way of getting from
Speaker 1: the outpost to someplace safe without taking an extensive helicopter ride. Uh.
Speaker 1: And so you're you're pretty much stuck there. But how
Speaker 1: does the game actually unfold? Yeah? Sure, So to start,
Speaker 1: everyone gets a player board and it's one of the
Speaker 1: characters from the movie. And then the next thing you
Speaker 1: get is a hidden identity card, so you keep that
Speaker 1: face down in front of you. Only you can look
Speaker 1: at it, and it either says if you're a human
Speaker 1: or if you've been compromised in your invitation. And to
Speaker 1: start the game, there's only gonna ever be one imitation,
Speaker 1: So you get that, and then you have a hand
Speaker 1: of supply cards, which are items you would find at
Speaker 1: the outpost. It's you know, got the Petrie dish, you
Speaker 1: got copper wire, knife, gun, that kind of stuff. So
Speaker 1: you have that in your hand. You have your identity
Speaker 1: and then someone gets chosen as a captain. They draw
Speaker 1: a mission card. They read it aloud. It tells you
Speaker 1: how many people need to go on the mission with them,
Speaker 1: and if there's any restrictions. So each player board has
Speaker 1: a different team and you have science, maintenance, and operations.
Speaker 1: And each mission card will say okay, I need six people.
Speaker 1: I need to operations and one science, so you have
Speaker 1: to take whoever those people are okay. So then the
Speaker 1: captain will read the mission. It'll say, you know, everyone
Speaker 1: turning cards and you need to copper wire to pass.
Speaker 1: So he goes around and says, okay, do you have
Speaker 1: copper wire? Do you have copper wire? You kind of
Speaker 1: get a feel for who he wants to bring on
Speaker 1: the mission, and you choose a room on the map,
Speaker 1: and each room has a tile face down in it,
Speaker 1: and once you go in a room, you do the
Speaker 1: mission and if it everyone's gonna turn in cards, the
Speaker 1: captain is gonna secretly look at them. So the captain
Speaker 1: is the one with all the information here, so he'll know, oh,
Speaker 1: you told me you have copper wire, but you were
Speaker 1: actually lying. So he but again he has all the information.
Speaker 1: He could say, oh, you said you had copper wire,
Speaker 1: but I didn't get any from you. But you know, again,
Speaker 1: the captain could be the one who's you know, the
Speaker 1: imitation and trying to throw suspicion on other people, so
Speaker 1: save the mission passes. The captain reveals all the cards.
Speaker 1: Everything's great, all humans. You flip the tile over in
Speaker 1: the room and under the room tiles um you have
Speaker 1: certain things you're looking for, and each and the outpost
Speaker 1: is broken out into sectors, so you start with sector one.
Speaker 1: You need a rope and you need to defeat a
Speaker 1: thing that's on the board. So at some point you're
Speaker 1: gonna flip over a room tile and the thing's gonna
Speaker 1: pop up, and you have to do this big battle
Speaker 1: where the captain takes everyone on the that's already on
Speaker 1: the team and collects more cards and rolls dice tried
Speaker 1: to see it m So once you defeat it, you
Speaker 1: go back and you kind of have a discussion like, hey,
Speaker 1: what what happened there? Like I thought I trusted you
Speaker 1: this and that um. All the while, the captain will
Speaker 1: move to the next person and you just keep going
Speaker 1: on missions and the actual gameplay itself. You kind of
Speaker 1: can pick up after a couple of times, but the
Speaker 1: game is gonna be different every time depending on who
Speaker 1: you play it with, because certain people are gonna, you know,
Speaker 1: maybe play it pretty cool until the end, or some
Speaker 1: people are just gonna go hard because there's uh these
Speaker 1: red sabotage cards in there that it's in the Supply
Speaker 1: I deck that you could secretly turn in and purposely
Speaker 1: sabotage a mission. So once you go through the entire
Speaker 1: outposts and you clear a certain nine tiles you find rope, imitation, dynamite,
Speaker 1: and the flamethrower, you get to go towards the escape phase.
Speaker 1: So the goal there is there's a helicopter on the
Speaker 1: board and you want to try to get to the
Speaker 1: helicopter and escape, so that there's a final captain. Everyone's
Speaker 1: gonna vote on this final captain, like, oh, do you
Speaker 1: do you trust this person to make the team that's
Speaker 1: going to try to escape? And everyone votes and it's
Speaker 1: yes or no. And Finn captain. Once he's chosen, he's
Speaker 1: just gonna go through and he's gonna pick in uh,
Speaker 1: let's say six player game, he's gonna pick three other
Speaker 1: people to come with him. He chooses his people, they go,
Speaker 1: they placed their movers on the helicopter tile, and one
Speaker 1: by one everyone reveals their identities and if you have
Speaker 1: all humans, you win game over. Great if a single
Speaker 1: imitation makes it onto helicopter. They've made into the rest
Speaker 1: of the world. Game over imitations when right, you've just
Speaker 1: infected the entire world by unleashing this horrendous beast outside
Speaker 1: of the secluded area. Yeah, and what's what's kind of fun. Um,
Speaker 1: what's interesting is that as you clear out these sectors,
Speaker 1: so in between each sector, uh, there's an infection phase
Speaker 1: that happens. So you know, there can be more imitations.
Speaker 1: So you know, somebody who started the game as a
Speaker 1: human playing perfectly fine, Um, they may at the end
Speaker 1: of the game being imitation. So there's there is kind
Speaker 1: of an interesting dynamic there where you start off with
Speaker 1: this one limitation, you end up with three, you know,
Speaker 1: at the end of the game, and you really don't
Speaker 1: know who's who at what point. I mean, you maybe
Speaker 1: have built complete trust in the person next to you,
Speaker 1: but every time a sector gets cleared, that trust just
Speaker 1: has to vanish because you really have no idea what's
Speaker 1: going on. And then the imitations. While the humans have
Speaker 1: to get out with the perfect number of humans on
Speaker 1: the helicopter, the invitations have a few ways to actually
Speaker 1: win the game. They can't they don't just get on
Speaker 1: the helicopter they can move this tracker up. For every
Speaker 1: failed mission, for everything that goes terribly wrong, this tracker
Speaker 1: moves up. And what as the tracker moves up, there
Speaker 1: are more and more consequences to the humans. And once
Speaker 1: that tracker moves all the way to the end, the
Speaker 1: game's over. The invitations of one. They can destroy the base,
Speaker 1: they can catch rooms on fire, they can absolutely you know,
Speaker 1: make it so that there aren't enough resources to win.
Speaker 1: So it really is kind of a it's a multi
Speaker 1: kind of multifaceted thing where you know, as the invitations play,
Speaker 1: some might play it, like Joe said, totally clean and
Speaker 1: just pretend to be human and hope to get on
Speaker 1: the helicopter by the end. But that's not always gonna
Speaker 1: work because they haven't they haven't messed the game up
Speaker 1: enough to really kind of make that make that work.
Speaker 1: So you know, some imitations may play very destructive, and
Speaker 1: you know, by the time you get through sector to
Speaker 1: the base is most completely destroyed. So there's a there
Speaker 1: are there are a hundred different ways to kind of
Speaker 1: plot and out of the you know, million times I've
Speaker 1: played the game of you know which, most of that
Speaker 1: time of limitation, I found all these different ways to
Speaker 1: play it, and some are really effective against some players,
Speaker 1: some are not effective at all. It's it's it's really interesting.
Speaker 1: There's a lot of there's a lot of dynamic there.
Speaker 1: Unlike other games where you know it's just a quick
Speaker 1: like pass fail and you're just trying to fail fail things,
Speaker 1: this one's got that. There's a lot of nuance and
Speaker 1: how this one's played. I imagine there's also a great
Speaker 1: challenge on the part of players. Let's say that you
Speaker 1: start off as human and you end up being imitation
Speaker 1: after clearing out a sector. Uh, then the the the
Speaker 1: onus is on you as the player to try and
Speaker 1: make sure you're not playing so differently than you were
Speaker 1: before that. Immediately everyone is keyed into what has happened
Speaker 1: the strategy there. Yeah, if you react to anything, or
Speaker 1: you kind of all of a sudden you're just yeah,
Speaker 1: you're acting a little squirrelly, people are gonna instantly I
Speaker 1: think there's something wrong with you. I mean, there's even
Speaker 1: a there's even a deeper kind of level of play
Speaker 1: for imitations where I played one game where I got
Speaker 1: ahold of the Flamethrower and I was an imitation and
Speaker 1: I actually knew who another imitation was, So I killed
Speaker 1: the other imitation. We all voted on it. They said
Speaker 1: I could do it. I torched another imitation. At the table,
Speaker 1: They're gone forever. They revealed their cards. Sure enough, they're
Speaker 1: in imitation. I had the trust of the entire table.
Speaker 1: There was no way they believed that I was an imitation.
Speaker 1: Sure enough, I was got out on the help helicopter.
Speaker 1: I was voted the captain, got out of helicopter as
Speaker 1: the captain. Uh. And that was great. It was like
Speaker 1: the most It was super cathartic because you know, I
Speaker 1: murdered another imitation. But that's what That's what a imitation
Speaker 1: would do. It's all part of one organism. So why
Speaker 1: not why not cut off an arm to be able
Speaker 1: to get out and infect the world. Well, so, how
Speaker 1: long did this development process take from the point where
Speaker 1: you know, Joe, you came on board to win. It
Speaker 1: was a game that had gone through playtesting and you
Speaker 1: guys were feeling good about ready to go into production.
Speaker 1: Yeah one did we start on that? Yeah? Exactly. Um,
Speaker 1: I'd say it was probably a year and a half total.
Speaker 1: And for design a game that's pretty quick, especially one
Speaker 1: that has so many little complicated factors. I mean, every
Speaker 1: individual game mechanic when you just look at it, you know,
Speaker 1: sequestered from everything else, is fairly simple. But then you
Speaker 1: start adding them all together, and it adds this level
Speaker 1: of complexity where you are going to get very different
Speaker 1: play experiences every time you go through it. So, uh,
Speaker 1: I imagine that, you know, again playing through and making sure, oh,
Speaker 1: did the new thing that we just added to the game,
Speaker 1: not literally thing necessarily, but the new element we just
Speaker 1: added to the game, did that just break the game?
Speaker 1: I imagine there was a lot of that. For example,
Speaker 1: you like in I know that in the game, as
Speaker 1: in the movie, you have that that ability to test
Speaker 1: someone like you can choose another player to test if
Speaker 1: you have the right equipment to test their blood, and
Speaker 1: then they have to reveal to you whether or not
Speaker 1: they are human or imitation. But at that point of course,
Speaker 1: then it's up to you, the person who just did
Speaker 1: the testing, to convince everybody else that what you saw
Speaker 1: was real or maybe not real if you are in
Speaker 1: fact in imitation and trying to trick everybody. Uh. I
Speaker 1: imagine that was one of those things where you you
Speaker 1: saw that scene in the film it's iconic that moment
Speaker 1: where they're all together and they're being forced to test
Speaker 1: their blood to prove whether or not they are human.
Speaker 1: I imagine that was one of those things that you
Speaker 1: knew you had to have in the game, but at
Speaker 1: the same time, you can't. You can't have it be
Speaker 1: something that can happen all the time or else the
Speaker 1: imitations are revealed immediately. So how did those considerations come about?
Speaker 1: Was that just sort of trial and error or was
Speaker 1: there some other approach? Oh? Yeah, lots lots and lots
Speaker 1: of play testing, ton of help from a lot of people.
Speaker 1: Um so that I think that started off where there
Speaker 1: was a flamethrower in the actual supply deck cards, and
Speaker 1: there might have been like one or two in there.
Speaker 1: So it's originally, if you've got the flamethrower, a copper wire,
Speaker 1: and a Petri dish, you can choose to test someone.
Speaker 1: But that was so random. It would not happen in
Speaker 1: a single game, and then the next game would happen
Speaker 1: three times, and it I just like to be able
Speaker 1: to control when something like that happens, right, Um So
Speaker 1: that's why when we finally figured it out. Okay, the
Speaker 1: flamethrower will just be its own thing. It'll be a tile.
Speaker 1: And at one point all the titles were random, you know,
Speaker 1: you could just go anywhere on the board. So again,
Speaker 1: like it made the games vastly different and that you
Speaker 1: couldn't really control the gameplay experience. How you know, you
Speaker 1: wanted it to feel similar to the movie. So when
Speaker 1: we finally figured out, okay, you have sector one, sector two,
Speaker 1: sector three, and there will be different items and the tiles.
Speaker 1: So that's why we put the flamethrower in sector three.
Speaker 1: So once you get to sector three, that's pretty much
Speaker 1: the end of the game and you have to find
Speaker 1: a flamethrower. So we're gonna make it so people will
Speaker 1: you know, want to use this before the game ends,
Speaker 1: and it's the end of the game. So if someone
Speaker 1: kind of gets revealed, that's okay because you're not kind
Speaker 1: of just sitting around for the rest of the game,
Speaker 1: you know, being accused or whatever. So, um, it was
Speaker 1: all about controlling when certain things happened. Yeah, and that
Speaker 1: was like, oh and that was actually I was gonna
Speaker 1: say that was that was one of the most eye
Speaker 1: opening parts of watching the development of this game, because
Speaker 1: you know, on the on the Mondo side on this, um,
Speaker 1: you know, I mean ro Amando now. But you know,
Speaker 1: at the when we were doing the development, I mean
Speaker 1: we were really responsible for the art in the design,
Speaker 1: and Joe was you know, completely took over just doing
Speaker 1: the game design. So our contribution would be things like, hey,
Speaker 1: what if we did this, would this be cool? This
Speaker 1: is from the movie. I watched the movie again last night,
Speaker 1: Can we please do this? And you know you could
Speaker 1: see poor Joe's head explode because it would be something
Speaker 1: that was so mechanically difficult to put into a board game.
Speaker 1: But there was this this moment where Joe got it
Speaker 1: all into this, into the sectors and with the tiles
Speaker 1: that are in the sectors and the supplies that you're afforded.
Speaker 1: What that ended up doing is it actually became this
Speaker 1: really really really tight narrative in a game where you
Speaker 1: can go anywhere you want to do what you want
Speaker 1: to do, choose who you want to choose to trust,
Speaker 1: who you want to trust. It's it's so controlled in
Speaker 1: the pacing. I mean, in the beginning of the game,
Speaker 1: it's kind of it's easy and everybody's getting along and
Speaker 1: doing just fine. By the middle of the game, all
Speaker 1: of a sudden, you've got a rope, and you know,
Speaker 1: you can tie somebody up to the couch for that
Speaker 1: turn so that they don't, you know, come with you
Speaker 1: and mess something up. So all of a sudden, there's
Speaker 1: like that that the bigness trust starts to happen, and
Speaker 1: then by the end it's complete chaos and everybody's yelling
Speaker 1: at each other and somebody got a flamethrough and oh
Speaker 1: my god, what if the thing got a flamethrower? What
Speaker 1: are we gonna do? So there's this really kind of
Speaker 1: neat uh, like you said, this control of the moments
Speaker 1: that were really important, to beats that were super important
Speaker 1: to the to the narrative there that I was. I
Speaker 1: was really blown away once it once it all started
Speaker 1: to come together, and every time we played it it
Speaker 1: was different, but just as thrilling every time. Well and
Speaker 1: and again that goes back to being evocative of the
Speaker 1: film itself, which is all about paranoia. I mean, that's
Speaker 1: ultimately what the thing is. It's the bit about this
Speaker 1: this alien creature that is infecting people. That's you know,
Speaker 1: that's the the the instigating factor. But the drama, of
Speaker 1: course comes from all these different characters not knowing who
Speaker 1: they can trust, and that playing out throughout the rest
Speaker 1: of the movie to the point where even at the
Speaker 1: very end there's some questions that remain. So it's, um,
Speaker 1: it's fantastic to see that being incorporated into gameplay so
Speaker 1: that you you can have that experience. If there weren't uh,
Speaker 1: these elements that would cause players to start screaming at
Speaker 1: each other, that you wouldn't really have the thing. Maybe
Speaker 1: a different John Carpenter movie, maybe I don't know, Big
Speaker 1: Trouble and Little China or something. But so you mentioned
Speaker 1: the Mondo working on the art. I mean, obviously Mondo
Speaker 1: is known for art design and for incredible posters and
Speaker 1: other types of of tie ins with various types of
Speaker 1: pop culture. What were some of the was the John
Speaker 1: Carverter film? Was that the like the one and only
Speaker 1: influence or were there other influences when it came to
Speaker 1: the art design for this game. Well, it's interesting because
Speaker 1: we we hired Justin Ericsson to to do the art
Speaker 1: and you know, Justin is one of those artists who
Speaker 1: he'll do he does the best stuff with large product
Speaker 1: jicks like he he really loves to dive in and
Speaker 1: get into the details, get into the tiny stuff. He
Speaker 1: did this really phenomenal Batman, the animated series box set
Speaker 1: for us, the vinyl box set that we put out,
Speaker 1: um and it's just head to toe gorgeous. Every piece
Speaker 1: of that is is its own piece of art. So
Speaker 1: when we were doing our first game, I mean, it
Speaker 1: was almost a default kind of artist selection. Who said,
Speaker 1: Justin Rickson, that's the person that we trust right now.
Speaker 1: We can have him do this for our first game.
Speaker 1: We need him to do it. He'll take this thing
Speaker 1: and go nuts with it. And so he and I
Speaker 1: really dove in and we we looked at the not
Speaker 1: only the aesthetic of the movie, but a lot of
Speaker 1: it is the aesthetic of you know, what would Outpost
Speaker 1: thirty one? What would things from Outpost thirty one look like?
Speaker 1: Things you don't really see necessarily, like, you know, I uh,
Speaker 1: like an operations manual, So what would it? What would
Speaker 1: an arctic you know, kind of research station in two?
Speaker 1: What would their ops manual look like? That's what our
Speaker 1: manual should look like. That's what a rule book should
Speaker 1: look like for the game. And you know what would
Speaker 1: what would an employee file look like? There is there
Speaker 1: anything we can add to that that would be kind
Speaker 1: of cool. How can we do personnel files and how
Speaker 1: do we So we were really trying to extract from
Speaker 1: a bit of the utilitarian design that would exist in
Speaker 1: a US Antarctic research station. You know, there's it's it's
Speaker 1: fortunate and unfortunate. But unfortunately the film, you know, it
Speaker 1: takes place in snow, there isn't there isn't really this
Speaker 1: kind of lush like, you know, there's not a lot
Speaker 1: of color other than blue and white. Um, you know,
Speaker 1: the location itself is very unsexy. It's not it's not
Speaker 1: some cool sci fi thing with a bunch of chrome
Speaker 1: and all this neat stuff. It's just this really kind
Speaker 1: of bland base. So that was one of the biggest
Speaker 1: challenges was you know, kind of making this still look
Speaker 1: really really cool. So diving into a lot of the
Speaker 1: you know, let's have fun with taking real artifacts out
Speaker 1: of this base and seeing how we would design those.
Speaker 1: That's that's where it started to really come together, and
Speaker 1: it you know, it feels like something from the film,
Speaker 1: but also just feels like something very real cool. Well,
Speaker 1: were there any elements that you were hoping to include
Speaker 1: in the game that just didn't make it in. Maybe
Speaker 1: there was something that just it just could not work
Speaker 1: within the components that you had designed, or uh, something
Speaker 1: that that you just could not really figure out how
Speaker 1: to make that a gameplay mechanic. Joe, did you have anything? Um,
Speaker 1: I'm trying to think. I mean, we had a ton
Speaker 1: that was the thing. We really we threw everything at
Speaker 1: it in the very beginning, and you know, you've got
Speaker 1: to you have to scale back, and you've got to
Speaker 1: you definitely need to kind of pull things away more
Speaker 1: than add things. Um, but I don't know if there
Speaker 1: was anything huge that we completely missed that we didn't
Speaker 1: get to do. There is one element and that element
Speaker 1: will be uh will be revealed as a as an
Speaker 1: expansion to this game. So yeah, there is that. We
Speaker 1: did have one big one um that we all just
Speaker 1: sort of went, God, it would be so cool if
Speaker 1: this happened, and then it was turned into no, wait,
Speaker 1: let's just make that happen. That's cool, it's we'll do
Speaker 1: an ad on. That's fine, we can actually do this.
Speaker 1: But yes, aside from you know, I think everything was
Speaker 1: in there. I mean, I honestly I can't think of
Speaker 1: anything that we left out or just regrettably weren't able
Speaker 1: to put in. I mean, we've been got the you know,
Speaker 1: McCready's chess computer is a you know, is a three
Speaker 1: D piece that you move along the tracker. I mean
Speaker 1: it's little stuff like that where you go. Wouldn't it
Speaker 1: be good if we could do this? And then somebody says, well,
Speaker 1: why don't we nice? Good, Yeah, let's actually do it.
Speaker 1: I love that all the pieces are are you know,
Speaker 1: those are the actual characters. It's not like a little
Speaker 1: generic marker. You've got the actual characters that you get
Speaker 1: to play with, uh, which I mean I would have
Speaker 1: expected that from Mondo, so totally makes sense. But uh. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the designs that I've looked at, and full disclosure, I
Speaker 1: haven't seen this in person. I've only I've watched a
Speaker 1: lot of videos and looked at a lot of art.
Speaker 1: Uh and uh, I love the design. Also, I feel
Speaker 1: very very strongly as a John Carpenter fan, that if
Speaker 1: you are to play this game, especially for the first time,
Speaker 1: you need to have just that that synth soundtrack playing
Speaker 1: in the background. Absolutely, yeah, you really do. Um And
Speaker 1: to give it to give a shout out to uh
Speaker 1: one of our partners out there, Waxwork Records actually put
Speaker 1: out The Thing on vinyl and it's a stellar release.
Speaker 1: So when you go out and buy your Thing board game,
Speaker 1: please make it a point to get the John Carpenter's
Speaker 1: The Thing on vinyl to listen to it alongside. Absolutely. Yeah,
Speaker 1: Justin Ericson actually did Dark as well. Yeah, this was
Speaker 1: a great kind of crossover. We had no idea, you know,
Speaker 1: because we don't it's not like we share what we're
Speaker 1: working on behind the scenes with everybody. But yeah, when, um,
Speaker 1: when Waxwork announced that they had that they were doing
Speaker 1: the Thing and they showed the fantastic artwork and it's
Speaker 1: really cool package design. I called Ericson and I was like,
Speaker 1: how in the world were you working on the same
Speaker 1: property at the same time for two different companies And
Speaker 1: you said nothing, And that guy is just's he's a
Speaker 1: he's a total h he's a total pro. And he said, no,
Speaker 1: it was cool. It was really good. I got to
Speaker 1: just do two completely different ideas for the same movie.
Speaker 1: But yeah, Ericson was in Thingville for a long time there.
Speaker 1: That's fantastic. Guys, Jay and Joe, thank you so much
Speaker 1: for joining me on the show and talking about this
Speaker 1: this project. I look forward to playing it. I've got
Speaker 1: a lot of friends who are big into board games.
Speaker 1: They're also colossal geeks like myself. I say that with
Speaker 1: love that we we love games, we love pop culture,
Speaker 1: and uh, there's more than a few like die hard
Speaker 1: John Carpenter fans. Also, more than a few of them
Speaker 1: here at How Stuff Works. Two of them are in
Speaker 1: this very room that I'm sitting in. So uh so
Speaker 1: this is this is definitely the game that's made for
Speaker 1: folks like myself. If people want to pick up a
Speaker 1: copy of the thing, where would they go? So it's
Speaker 1: arriving right now actually on local game store shelves. Um,
Speaker 1: so we've got it's everything has come in and it's
Speaker 1: just making its way out to shelves now. Um we
Speaker 1: will have our Mondo Edition of this game. And that's uh,
Speaker 1: that's the special edition of it. It's limited to one
Speaker 1: two copies. Um, it's got different box are a slip case,
Speaker 1: some additional pieces and some some goodies inside that will
Speaker 1: be available for the first time at Mondo Con next weekend,
Speaker 1: and then whatever we have left over from that we'll
Speaker 1: put online shortly after. But right now, you can you know,
Speaker 1: call your local game store and go pick it up. Sweet. Well, guys,
Speaker 1: thank you so much for joining the show. Yeah, thank
Speaker 1: you very much, and then we'll take another quick break
Speaker 1: to thank our sponsor. Thanks again to Jay and Joe
Speaker 1: for joining our show to talk about their work on
Speaker 1: the game. Now, as you heard, figuring out exactly how
Speaker 1: to create a game be challenging. One thing that really
Speaker 1: helps is having a specific theme in mind. In this case,
Speaker 1: Mondo wanted to capture that feeling of paranoia and isolation
Speaker 1: that defines the thing. Now, that can help a great
Speaker 1: deal when you're working on the game mechanics. Anything that
Speaker 1: contributes to that feeling and allows players to progress or
Speaker 1: perhaps encounter setbacks is a potential keeper. Anything that detracts
Speaker 1: from that experience needs to be tweaked or tossed. So
Speaker 1: let's say you decide you want you want to make
Speaker 1: a game. You've you've got the itch. You're like thinking,
Speaker 1: I've got a great idea for a game. How would
Speaker 1: you go about doing this? Well, one thing I recommend
Speaker 1: is looking up an article written by David Silverman, and
Speaker 1: that article is titled how to learn Board Game Design
Speaker 1: and Development. If you google David Silverman and how to
Speaker 1: learn board game design and development. It will pop right up.
Speaker 1: That article has got some great tips in it. I'm
Speaker 1: going to share a few here, but it really do
Speaker 1: suggest you check out the full article to learn more,
Speaker 1: because I'm just going to kind of highlight some stuff
Speaker 1: that Mr Silverman points out in his article how One
Speaker 1: tip is to do something similar to what the guys
Speaker 1: at Mondo did, which is to pick a theme for
Speaker 1: your game and use that theme to help determine which
Speaker 1: game mechanics should be included. In the case of the Thing,
Speaker 1: the designers knew they need to have an element of
Speaker 1: distrust and suspicion built right into the game mechanics, and
Speaker 1: having one player secretly working at cross purposes against all
Speaker 1: the others does the trick nicely. Silverman also suggests that
Speaker 1: you look at some games that you really enjoy playing
Speaker 1: and then at that point either add in new mechanics
Speaker 1: or try removing certain existing mechanics from that game and
Speaker 1: see how that affects the gameplay of the game. This
Speaker 1: helps you understand which gameplay mechanic elements are critical to
Speaker 1: making it work and how they fit together. So it's
Speaker 1: kind of playing through experience and learning how these game
Speaker 1: mechanics actually affect gameplay. Again, taking the Thing as an example,
Speaker 1: we can look at an identity game like Werewolf and
Speaker 1: see how that applies. So let's say we take the
Speaker 1: game Werewolf and we say, how could we adapt this
Speaker 1: to make it the Thing. Well, for those of you
Speaker 1: who do not know what Werewolf is, the game is
Speaker 1: pretty simple. It's played with a group of people. You
Speaker 1: typically have a moderator who is kind of judging what's
Speaker 1: happening and watching what's happening at the entire time, and
Speaker 1: then everyone else is a player. Uh. You usually want
Speaker 1: to have around seven players or more. Odd number is
Speaker 1: better than an even number. Typically, within that group of players,
Speaker 1: one or more of the people are designated as werewolves
Speaker 1: and the other players are villagers, and they don't know
Speaker 1: who is a werewolf versus who is a villager. The
Speaker 1: game has two major segments to each turn. There's a
Speaker 1: nighttime segment and a daytime segment. Let's take daytime first.
Speaker 1: During the daytime, the players, all the players, the villagers,
Speaker 1: and the werewolves included, and remember the villagers don't know
Speaker 1: who is a werewolf. They all try to suss out
Speaker 1: who amongst them is a werewolf. The people who are
Speaker 1: werewolves are obviously trying to push suspect away from them
Speaker 1: and toward innocent players. At the end of the day turn,
Speaker 1: they can vote to put someone to death, upon which
Speaker 1: that person who has put to death would reveal his
Speaker 1: or her identity and reveal whether or not they were
Speaker 1: a werewolf. Or you could also just try and gather
Speaker 1: information and wait to see what happens at the night turn.
Speaker 1: So at night, including the very first turn of the game,
Speaker 1: the werewolves are allowed to make their move. So at
Speaker 1: the first turn, everyone is supposed to close their eyes
Speaker 1: and the moderator says, werewolves, open your eyes, and the
Speaker 1: werewolves can all look at it around and see who
Speaker 1: else as their eyes open, and thus identify one another
Speaker 1: on that first turn. Then they decide which innocent villager
Speaker 1: they want to eliminate that evening, and assuming that villager
Speaker 1: is not saved by someone else's actions during the night turn,
Speaker 1: that person is dead come morning, and then the villagers
Speaker 1: have to try and figure out who is the werewolf.
Speaker 1: There are some special villager types that can actually save someone,
Speaker 1: but they have to do it without really knowing who
Speaker 1: they're who they should, you know, protect so there's a
Speaker 1: character type called the doctor, and the doctor can heal
Speaker 1: one person per night, and after the werewolf after their
Speaker 1: turn is over and they close their eyes, the moderator
Speaker 1: would say, all right, doctor, open your eyes, and whoever
Speaker 1: is playing the doctor would open his or her eyes
Speaker 1: pick someone in the group to save, and if they're lucky,
Speaker 1: they're saving the person that the werewolves have attacked. And
Speaker 1: then the doctor closes his or her eyes. And then
Speaker 1: there's one last character called the Seer, and the Seer
Speaker 1: is able to point at any other character and look
Speaker 1: at the moderator, and the moderator essentially gives a thumbs
Speaker 1: up saying yes, that person is a werewolf, or a
Speaker 1: thumbs down saying no, that person is not a werewolf.
Speaker 1: Play continues, So the werewolves their goal. They want to
Speaker 1: try and eliminate the Seer and the doctor as early
Speaker 1: as possible so that the villagers don't have any protection.
Speaker 1: The villagers obviously want to identify the werewolves, and it's
Speaker 1: during the daytime when everyone gets to accuse everybody else
Speaker 1: in try the werewolves trying to capitalize on that paranoia
Speaker 1: and suspicion. Very similar gameplay element that would play out
Speaker 1: in the Thing, although obviously in the board game of
Speaker 1: the Thing they tweaked this gameplay element quite a bit
Speaker 1: and they add a lot more to it. But it's
Speaker 1: kind of taking that approach that Silverman said. You take
Speaker 1: this game element that you find really compelling, and then
Speaker 1: you say, all right, well, how can I use this
Speaker 1: same sort of idea but in a new transformative way,
Speaker 1: so I'm not just treading the same ground someone else
Speaker 1: has already done. And of course even in where Wolf
Speaker 1: there are more advanced rules, there's some other special types
Speaker 1: of villagers have been added into variations of Werewolf, and
Speaker 1: just like that, you could see the same sort of
Speaker 1: complexity creeping into the Thing, although again the Thing adds
Speaker 1: even more elements with rooms and missions and things like
Speaker 1: that that are not in Werewolf at all. Um with
Speaker 1: the way things unfolding the Thing game, it's probably a
Speaker 1: good idea to avoid having all of the impostors know
Speaker 1: for certain which other players are bad guys. So in
Speaker 1: were Wolf, all the werewolves know who is a werewolf
Speaker 1: and who isn't. And the Thing, the the impostors, the
Speaker 1: the actual aliens that are posing as human, they don't
Speaker 1: know who any you know, they don't know if there
Speaker 1: are any other impostors there. They don't know the identity
Speaker 1: of them. They're working without that knowledge. But that's probably
Speaker 1: a good idea because they already have a lot of
Speaker 1: advantages over the human players. There are so many different
Speaker 1: steps the humans have to take in order to score
Speaker 1: a win, so adding even more challenge with a united
Speaker 1: enemy might make the game all but impossible for the humans.
Speaker 1: So Silverman suggests a game designers should also write down
Speaker 1: all their ideas for the game, including notes that this
Speaker 1: described the intent for those ideas. So, for example, if
Speaker 1: you were to say that you know, you can't allow
Speaker 1: people to just leave the confines of the board, the
Speaker 1: intent of that rule might be that you want to
Speaker 1: keep that sense of confinement in the game, And it
Speaker 1: may turn out later on in development that you want
Speaker 1: to change the game design, but you still want to
Speaker 1: stay true to the intent. You don't want people to
Speaker 1: feel confined, But you perhaps have found a different way
Speaker 1: to be true to that intent that works better for
Speaker 1: the game as a game mechanic, and that's a good thing.
Speaker 1: So that's something you actually want to strive for. Some
Speaker 1: of the other things you'll need to think about will
Speaker 1: be pretty basics, such as how many people should be
Speaker 1: involved in a play session. It's often best to aim
Speaker 1: for a range of players, because if you create a
Speaker 1: game that has to be played with a specific number,
Speaker 1: that limits your audience, and it can also lead to
Speaker 1: very frustrating experiences, like if you're at a party and
Speaker 1: you realize, oh, this game is for four players and
Speaker 1: we have five people, someone has to sit out. Figuring
Speaker 1: out how players act, how they are meant to interact
Speaker 1: with one another, and how long the game should be
Speaker 1: are also basic questions that are worth asking, you know. Um,
Speaker 1: keep in mind that players can and will choose to
Speaker 1: do things that you didn't anticipate. So it's your job
Speaker 1: as game designer to create the framework within which players
Speaker 1: can enjoy the game. That might include creating some strict rules,
Speaker 1: perhaps even some rules that some players might think are
Speaker 1: arbitrarily restrictive. But if you leave a game's rules super
Speaker 1: open and flexible, that puts so much more pressure on
Speaker 1: everyone who's playing the game to keep things working properly,
Speaker 1: and it can lead to a lot of ambiguous game events,
Speaker 1: which is not terribly satisfying. You might feel the temptation
Speaker 1: to make your game incredibly complicated and rich with detail.
Speaker 1: That's not necessarily a bad thing. You may want it
Speaker 1: so that the feeling is more closely aligned to what
Speaker 1: you had in mind when you came up with the concept.
Speaker 1: Let's say it's a weird fiction game that's set in
Speaker 1: a Cathulu like universe. There might be a lot of
Speaker 1: complex rules to dictate how characters interact with that world.
Speaker 1: But complexity also adds in a tougher learning curve for players,
Speaker 1: and it can end up being too restrictive and frustrating
Speaker 1: if it's not dealt with properly. Silverman actually suggests simplifying
Speaker 1: your game as you develop it, streamlining elements so that
Speaker 1: you end up with the most important and fun game
Speaker 1: mechanics and you toss aside anything that's laborious or detracts
Speaker 1: from the feel of the game. Silverman also suggests that
Speaker 1: you go easy on the prototypes, so when you're making
Speaker 1: your first prototype game, don't go all out. Make sure
Speaker 1: you create items that will represent the actual game mechanics.
Speaker 1: You do want to have those things there, but don't
Speaker 1: spend too much time on designs when there's the very
Speaker 1: real possibility that you'll need to do revisions and perhaps
Speaker 1: even extensive revisions when you're ready to make the next iteration.
Speaker 1: If you spend hours and hours meticulously designing game tiles
Speaker 1: like you're illustrating them and they look beautiful, and you've
Speaker 1: done all the sketches and the color and all of that,
Speaker 1: and then you find out the tile system you created
Speaker 1: isn't much fun, well, that was a lot of time
Speaker 1: you could have spent on other elements of the game,
Speaker 1: and it's time you're not going to get back. Playtesting
Speaker 1: is also obviously a very big part of this process.
Speaker 1: Sometimes you just can't tell how well a mechanic will
Speaker 1: hold up until you see it put in use by
Speaker 1: real players, and it really is easy for one additional
Speaker 1: element to mess up something that had been part of
Speaker 1: the game's design from the very beginning. Q A testers
Speaker 1: are familiar with the idea that with every new feature
Speaker 1: you have the potential to break a lot of the
Speaker 1: old ones. This is also true with board games, just
Speaker 1: as it is with websites and other things, So something
Speaker 1: that seemed like a great idea after a playtest session
Speaker 1: might turn out to be a game breaking device when
Speaker 1: you put it into practice. Playtesting also helps you identify
Speaker 1: the features that are working and the ones that are not.
Speaker 1: Silverman also recommends recording playtest sessions so that you can
Speaker 1: reference specific times when something important happens during a game.
Speaker 1: It might be something that's good and you'll want to
Speaker 1: figure out how to make that more important and prominent
Speaker 1: in the game. You might think, well, this was a
Speaker 1: really special moment. I want to make sure that this
Speaker 1: special moment happens more frequently, not so frequently as to
Speaker 1: lose its special ness, but to happen enough so that
Speaker 1: it's not you know, a once in a million kind
Speaker 1: of chance. Or maybe that a playtesting session leads to
Speaker 1: questions that don't have answers yet and you realize, oh,
Speaker 1: I need to address this. Recording the sessions really makes
Speaker 1: it a lot easier to focus on the important aspects.
Speaker 1: Silverman also walks you through how to get a game published,
Speaker 1: whether it's self publication or otherwise. Now, I feel that
Speaker 1: goes beyond the scope of what I'm trying to do here,
Speaker 1: so again I recommend you go find David Silverman's article again.
Speaker 1: It's titled how to learn Board Game Design and Development.
Speaker 1: It's quite well written and has a lot more information
Speaker 1: on the subject there. I do not know David Silverman,
Speaker 1: I have no connection with him at all, but I
Speaker 1: really did like the article quite a bit. Games, I
Speaker 1: feel are experiencing a real surge in popularity these days.
Speaker 1: It's been happening over the last several years. Particularly games
Speaker 1: that bring people together in the same place at the
Speaker 1: same time, so board games and card games. And even
Speaker 1: if you have no intention of ever making a game yourself,
Speaker 1: I think it's pretty fascinating to look at all the
Speaker 1: things that go into making a game come together and
Speaker 1: to make it work. And I hope you enjoyed this episode,
Speaker 1: whether you're an avid gamer, a casual game player, maybe
Speaker 1: you're a game developer, or maybe you really never gave
Speaker 1: the subject much thought before. I want to thank Joe
Speaker 1: and j from Mondo again for taking the time to
Speaker 1: chat with me. Mondo may some really cool stuff, including
Speaker 1: some killer posters that I love to collect, so you
Speaker 1: should go and check them out. If you have any
Speaker 1: suggestions for future episodes of tech Stuff, whether it's a company,
Speaker 1: a technology, a person. Maybe there's someone you want me
Speaker 1: to have on as either a guest to interview or
Speaker 1: a guest co host, let me know send me a message.
Speaker 1: The email address is tech Stuff at how stuff works
Speaker 1: dot com, or you can drop me a line on
Speaker 1: Facebook or Twitter. The handle of both of those is
Speaker 1: text stuff hs W. Remember I record episodes live on
Speaker 1: Wednesdays and Friday's on twitch dot tv slash tech Stuff.
Speaker 1: Just go to that link and you can find the
Speaker 1: schedule there. I hope to see you in the chat room.
Speaker 1: I always like to chat with you people whenever I
Speaker 1: have ad brakes and and before and after shows. So
Speaker 1: hope to see you there and I'll talk to you
Speaker 1: again really soon. For more on this and thousands of
Speaker 1: other topics because it hou stoff works dot com. Wond