Developer Interview - Grant Rodiek of Hyperbole Games and Maxis

 

Grant: I'm a 33 year old resident of San Francisco where I live with my wife and dog. Professionally, I'm an 11 year veteran of the video game industry, primarily working on The Sims with Maxis, and a 6 year veteran of board game design and now, publishing. I'm a big history nerd, I love the SF restaurant scene, and my favorite cocktail is the Negroni. 

 

 

 

Grant: I try to bring a sense of process and organization to my board game projects. Video games are so expensive and have firm deadlines, most often. While that isn't the case with board games, I like to set deadlines and work in a focused manner. For example, I write my rules document before I ever test once. This shakes out a lot of bad ideas and exposes situations I hadn't initially considered. I've started noting every play and then cataloging what happened in the test, what changed, and I can use this to evaluate the history of the game, or bring ideas back. I also have a lot of experience taking in feedback, which helps. Finally, I try to use my gut sense of "is this good enough?" that I've used and seen at work to make changes, even dramatic ones. My video game training helps a great deal.

 

 

Grant: I think you're starting to see this now. Fantasy Flight implemented an app to control the bad guys in Decent, and I believe they said sales increased significantly. You're seeing them make Mansions of Madness 2nd Edition, which uses an app. One Night Ultimate Aliens uses an app, and First Martians will use an app. 

 

Video games allow board games to have status effects (i.e. lose one health every turn) or present a wide variety of outcomes simply. In many ways, the XCOM board game app is effectively a ton of cards being drawn off a deck in real time. However, I worry adding digital elements will convince designers they can be more complicated. We do this all the time in video games. A general rule of thumb is that if the player doesn't know why a thing happened, it might as well be random. Just because you can now have a 50 stats for an article of armor doesn't mean you should. 

 

I think video games could benefit from the tangible, tactile nature of board games. Skylanders sort of did this. I think board games could benefit from broader narrative options and better status tracking from video games. 

 

 

Grant: Consumers have been trained differently in both ecosystems. I think tabletop customers are far more price sensitive than video gamers. Asmodee is changing how they work with online retailers and this has caused a bit of a furor with more folks than I would expect.  

 

Video gamers were basically told Consoles cost X and games cost $60, and that's just that. But, folks gets incredibly angry still when it comes to DLC. Board gamers generally are okay with more content. Magic is the bread and butter of many game stores and Fantasy Flight is doing incredibly well with several LCG titles, as well as miniatures games like Armada and X-Wing that have a steady drip of new content. 

 

I think the indie scene is stronger in video games, in that the term "indie" holds more weight. But, this is mostly because almost everyone in tabletop IS indie. Most companies are 1-2 folks making things, contracting for art and manufacturing. It's just much more a garage style industry than video games. 

 

 

Grant: It really depends on your deadlines. In video games, the teams and budgets are enormous, which means you need to be cautious. You don't want to send 25 people in a direction you haven't really considered thoroughly. A scant few teams in the industry are fully divorced from deadlines, but it's generally not the case for most of us. We do a lot of iteration and experimenting, but we have to be far more disciplined and regimented with how we execute against it. 

 

Board games on the other hand allow for constant experimentation. I can very easily rip out a card, tweak its effect, change the hit probability, all of that in seconds. A feature in a video game might take 3 weeks to see the bare bones version, whereas I can play a full version of a board game on my 2nd or 3rd test. It won't be good, but it'll be there. 

 

Basically, in video games we have to do a lot more up front thinking, leaning on our experiences, our budget limitations, marketing input, and gut instincts. In board games, I can meander through the woods until I find something cool.

 

 

Grant: I feel quite a bit of pressure on both! I'm a lead producer working on a lot of different titles with a lot of direct reports in video games. I'm constantly trying to figure out how to be a better mentor, be decisive without being a jerk, figuring out the times to fight hard or let it go, all of that. But, as a tabletop publisher, I've basically been losing money for two years. I'm in the early larval stage where my print runs aren't really big enough to generate great profits due to margins, and if a game is bad, it's literally 100% my fault. I pace about a lot.

 

 

Grant: Most simply, I couldn't have finished Cry Havoc on my own. I wanted to work with Portal due to their style of games and knowledge on making asymmetric games. I wanted to learn from them and I wanted Cry Havoc to be great. I started my own publishing company because I wanted to be an entrepreneur and I wanted to control the process from start to finish. I honestly love hiring artists, working with manufacturers, and packaging games in my garage. But, I've also chosen games that are smaller and more contained. I know that Hocus is the best it can be. Farmageddon is the best it can be. Cry Havoc wouldn't have been that with just me, so I sought to work with someone who could do that, and that was Portal.

 

 

 

Grant: Yes, actually, it is. We have a program called SimGuru where several producers, designers, engineers, and others have Twitter accounts where they talk directly to the fans. 10 years ago this wouldn't have been allowed. Our community relations were far more strictly controlled. But, folks know the guidelines of what they can and cannot talk about and we try to be hands on with the community. 

 

As with all things, it's a matter of scale. There are millions of Sims fans and customers, versus (right now) hundreds of Cry Havoc fans (as the game isn't properly released yet). Just like the Sims, it's possible to answer a question wrong, or goof in some other way. It just a matter of going "Whoops, I did that wrong" and trying to be responsive and transparent.

 

 

Grant: For me it's mostly a shrug. I've played just shy of 2000 games of Star Realms and Ascension each, and hundreds of games of Carcassonne on my phone. But, I play tabletop games largely as a social event and I want to sit with my friends, have a beer, and shuffle the cards. Often times the digital version just doesn't compare, so I've largely skipped the whole browser based board game scene.

 

 

Grant: I think it's smart, and I think it's a proven "good idea" by the market. I think folks need to not lose site of tabletop games being tangible and about social interaction with people at the table. Folks cannot be drawn so into the app they forget they're playing with friends in front of them.

 

I personally haven't loved many of the app games yet, but they were totally fine and I'm glad others do.

 

 

Grant: Generally speaking, I think publishers and designers have greatly improved the level of complexity in the games. If you look at Rosewater's efforts in Magic with "New World Order" and Fantasy Flight's complete 180, you'll see roughly what I'm talking about. Roughly when I started playing board games seriously about 6+ years ago, I was terrified of Fantasy Flight Games. They were always just so complex. Now, they're trying to be innovative in how they write their rules, and their games are just more focused, clean, and easy to learn. I'm a huge fan of them, and years ago I was not at all. 

 

There are other things helping. Video rules explanations go a long way. Rules are the number one hindrance for board games, which is why reducing complexity and rules videos are so important.

 

I think some studios are doing wonderful things with popular brands, which always helps. You can buy great Star Wars games, for example. Great Game of Thrones games. 

 

Finally, video games have become somewhat stagnant. Because they are so risky and so expensive, you're seeing more and more companies focus on somewhat mindless time waster mobile apps, which is fine, or a sequel to a game you've already played a dozen times. Nerds want to play games, and they are beginning to find out there is this huge library of board games. Most board games require multiple people to play, so the hobby literally creatures word of mouth just by existing in the first place. It's a compelling space and I think people want to be a part of it. 

 

 

 

Grant: I think of an experience I want to convey, then find the right thematic and mechanical tools to support it. For one of my prototypes, Solstice, I wanted to make a game that felt like Dune (the book), and I knew I wanted to make a game with drafting. With Farmageddon, I wanted a silly game built around farming, so I thought about the rough experience of farming in a nut shell and abstracted it to a more Looney Tunes style feeling. Hocus has almost no theme, and is built around the idea of "poker plus spells." 

 

I'm probably not the most thematic designer, though to get nitpicky, I think most people completely miss theme. Theme is not pretty art and custom meeples. Theme is when the actions you take represent the thing you're doing within the world. Theme helps present a narrative arc. Lately, I've been making short, 30 minute strategy games, and there just isn't much space in 30 minutes to create a player driven narrative arc! 

 

Basically, I try to think about what would be a cool thing to do, and then figure out the best ways to execute that.

 

 

Grant: The game should be fun. That's a construct of nice mechanisms, a theme that helps set the stage of folks, compelling and tactile components that are a delight to hold, and interesting ways to interact with and best your opponents. I think some truly terrible designs have come about because somebody kept saying "Oh and it would be sweet if..." built around a pirate ship or zombie theme. I also think there are far too many games that just do set collection just because, without doing something special, or different, or exciting with the mechanism. 

 

I think designers should be flexible and not too attached to their theme or the mechanism. More than anything, the overall product, the fun, and the experience it provides. 

 

 

Grant: I think constraints are fantastic for creativity, and I try to leverage them in both spaces. At Maxis, some of our best ideas have come from figuring out how to execute a weird, real life experience using a short deadline, or an engine restriction, viewed through the lens of what our community loves. Having a passionate, vocal community really helps us. 

 

In board games, I always try to define my boundaries within my goals. Cry Havoc, for example, started with 2-4 players, no dice, and 1-2 hour play time. Hocus was poker plus spells, which seems broad, but it really isn't. Solstice is drafting and deception. 

 

If you know what you want from a game, you'll find that the possibility space is pretty constrained, in a good way. It's when you don't know what you want that you wonder forever.  

 

 

 

 

Grant: Currently, my favorite tabletop games are Netrunner, Star Wars Armada, Merchants and Marauders, and Rex. Oh, and Combat Commander: Europe and Carcassonne. 

 

I really don't play many video games these days, but my recent favorites include TitanFall (I'm very excited for the sequel) and XCom (need a new computer to play the sequel). I think both of those games are perfect.