February 8, 2019 • 58 mins
Women are underrepresented when it comes to tabletop game development. Nicole Amato of Cardboard Fortress Games joins the show to share her experiences and offer some advice.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:05):
Hi, this is Annie, and you're listening to stuff I've
never told you. As we mentioned in our part one
episode on tabletop gaming with Tracy V. Wilson, we were
(00:27):
going to do a follow up on tabletop gaming development,
and here is that episode, and Tracy put me in
touch with our guest today, tabletop game developer Nicole. Hi. Nicole, Hi, Annie,
thank you so much for joining us today. Yeah, thanks
for having me. Could you tell us a little bit
(00:47):
about yourself? Sure? So. I am one half of the
game development team Cardboard Fortress Games. Um, it's me and
my husband. We made Resistor and Lasers and um a
game called Atari Atari cine Feed, which is a game
based on the old arcade game which is pretty funny.
(01:08):
Um and uh yeah, we have like a ton of
other games that are in development right now. But um yeah,
I don't know what else to say. I'm like, uh,
and during the day, I am a research analyst. I
don't know if that's interesting, of course it is. I
love I love research. I'm such a research nerd. How
did you get into tabletop game design? So? Um, gosh,
(01:32):
about nine years ago and like two thousand, I started
writing video game reviews and through that I got involved
in the local video game development scene. Um, I live
in Philadelphia and there were way more video game developers
than I could have even imagined. And we ended up
starting like a little group that met once a month,
(01:52):
and then that turned into like a weekly game dev
meeting kind of thing. Was called Philly DEEV Knight and
my husband and I we had we started dating in
and we would go to these meetings and there would
be game jams. Do you know what a game jam is? Idea,
but I would love if you could explain it. Sure, sure, sure,
So game jam is just everybody basically has the same
(02:15):
topic or the same general idea to work from, and
you have a set amount of time to make a game.
So ours was we have twenty four hours to make
a game, and the theme was picking Oasis song title
and make a game out of it, right, And I
was like, Wow, that doesn't sound interesting, And then I
looked up Oasis song titles and I was like, oh
my god, these are so bizarre. So my husband and
(02:38):
I were like, well, we can't make a video game,
but let's make a board game because we love playing
board games. So we're like, why don't we just make
a board game, and we ended up making a board
game that won the jam, and that is like where
it kind of all started. We ended up like figuring
out how to actually make the game and then putting
it on Kickstarter, and then we learned how to work
with publishers and that that was kind of like the
(03:01):
spark that started at all. May I ask what Oasis
song title you went with? Sure, roll It Over was
the name of this song title, and that, Um, yeah,
So the game is, um, it's called Resistant. It's like
there's red lines blue lines or red and blue lines
on each card, and each card is double sided and
there's a different image on each side and you're trying
(03:24):
to like connect your lines to go across words. So
if I was the red player, I would try to
get like a full red line going all the way
across the board. And Anthony, my husband, was like, oh,
we should make a game where we should use the
title roll it Over and use a game where you
have to like flip cards over and you're using both
sides of the card. So we ended up not keeping
the title, but that was the song. Um. Could you
(03:50):
describe more in depth the what goes into making a game? UM, well,
I'm just very curious and I yeah, that's your sure, sure, sure,
um We've had um there there's like a big divide
in the industry where it's like, well do you work
with theme first with mechanics first? And I feel like
(04:11):
we have kind of done both. Um. Like obviously with Resistor,
we had like a theme and a mechanic sort of
at the same time. The mechanic came person then we
ended up adding the theme because we were like, well,
what can we put on this? We put you know,
trains on this, connecting train lines or and we were
like what about you know, computer circuits, and we're like, yeah,
it could be like war games and that that was
(04:34):
really funny because we were like, let's do war games
at old eighties movie and then we turned the TV
on and it was on TV and we were like, well,
if that's a sign. But for the most part, it's
you know, Anthony and I will kind of like go
back and forth about an idea, and then if we
I think the idea is like viable, then we'll kind
of like start making it physically, like we'll cut pieces out,
(04:54):
or we'll just like you know, drawn on index cards
or and over the last five six year as we
have gotten so many different prototyping tools, like we have
you know, we bought blank cards, and we have all
different kinds of dice and like we've cannibalized old games
for pieces. So once we kind of play it a
(05:15):
few times, that can kind of show us like whether
or not we should keep going, whether we should hone it.
And it's a little bit tough because Anthony's a graphic designer,
so he also wants to make the prototypes like look
really beautiful right away. You know, if he makes a
lot of cards and they look beautiful and take to
make them and then you know, one major thing is
(05:37):
wrong that's on each card. You know, he doesn't want
to just cross it out if you had made them
on like index cards or blank cards and you could
just cross it out and you know, resleeve it. So
a lot of people will use um, you know, they'll
use the bare minimum pieces. They'll use index cards or
regular cards, and their intent is to get the mechanics
down and pitch it to a publisher and then the
(05:59):
publisher will take care of everything else. So it's kind
of different for everybody. Some people go into it thinking
like I'm working on this game. I start with an idea,
then I make the physical prototype, and then I'm going
to kind of be doing everything myself and making it
look a certain way. And other people are like, no,
I just want to do the most basic prototyping I can,
and then I'm going to offload it to somebody else
(06:21):
who's going to do all the other stuff. Is that
sort of the normal pipeline or the traditional pipeline? I
guess like you would design a game and maybe have
a prototype and then you would show it to a
publisher and try to get them to to buy it
and to make it. Or is there like a lot
more kickstarter type things now and self publishing. I think
(06:42):
that a lot of people are self publishing, and I
think a lot of people are self publishing because they
aren't sure how to get to a publisher. Doesn't I
don't know if that makes sense. But we I mean,
now that we've been doing this for so long, I
think that a lot of the people that we know
are death only the kind of people who pitched to publishers,
and we've become those people because we don't want to
(07:05):
do a kickstarter. We don't want to have to worry about,
you know, distribution and having all those games in our
house and going to the post office and all that stuff,
which is really overwhelming to me. Yeah. Yeah, I think
I think part of it is um some people just
(07:26):
want to do the game development part and and and
once you get to a certain point, you become privileged
enough that you can just do that because you have
set up the groundwork to have pipelines to publishers and
stuff like that and other people, you know. I think
I think kickstarter is often how people start, and then
once they kind of get to know the industry, they
can decide if they want to try to pursue working
(07:47):
with a publisher which also has its own you know,
hosts of pros and cons, because you're going to get
less money and you're going to have less control over
how the game is going to look and stuff like that. Yeah.
As someone who's like dipped my toe in the world
of publishing books, it sounds like a very similar similar thing.
(08:08):
I mentioned on this show before that I am in
the process of preparing to run a D and D
campaign for the first time. I love it. I'm so nervous,
but I'm like making props and I'm doing all this stuff,
and one of my favorite and most frightening aspects of it,
(08:29):
honestly is it's almost like psychology in a way because
you're having to think of what will people probably do
and then they probably won't do that anyway, But oh,
they won't do it. They won't do it. They're not
going to do it. I know, and I'm so nervous.
But it's just this aspect of planning the game that
(08:51):
I didn't really anticipate. Are there things like that that
you found in tabletop game development? Oh? Man, yeah, absolutely.
With running a D and D game, it's it's so
much about improvisation, and like there's so little that you
can like, like, it's about improvisation and adaptation, but there's
(09:13):
so little that you can then apply to another game
because it's like all you can do is hone your
ability to improvise. I don't know if that makes sense,
but with with tabletop game development, um part of it
is watching other people player game and learning what works
and what doesn't work by watching them player game. Like
you could have an intention and then if people consistently
(09:37):
read a rule in a different way than you intended it,
then you either need to rewrite that rule, or you
need to figure out a way to adapt to how
they're playing it because that's more intuitive to them. That
makes sense. Did you ever is this something you ever
imagined you would be doing? No? Now, I when I
was younger, I thought that I would be right books.
(10:00):
Like I thought I was going to write a book,
you know. That was my like goal in high school,
in college, and then when I got really into reviewing
for video games, I did, like start to dabble in.
I did some writing for video games, I did some
editing for video games, and then I was super hype
about that because I that's another passion that I've had
is is video games. I love playing them and being
(10:21):
in those worlds. But I never imagined that I would
be making board games. It's it blows me away on
a pretty regular basis. Do you have any any favorite
tabletop games or any of that inspired you? Yeah? Absolutely.
The first The first one that really inspired my husband
and I is pandemic or familiar with pandemic. I love pandemic.
(10:43):
It's so great. Right, have you say pandemic legacy? No?
But I got it after speaking to Chasey and she
told me she was a part of the like test
t like, Okay, I'm going to go out right after
this and buy it perfect. Yeah, Pandemic Legacy is super good.
It's fun. We're we're part way in the season two.
The only fans hard about it is getting a group
together to consistently play it as adult because everybody is
(11:07):
an adult with important, stupid crap to do. But yeah,
we we love Pandemic. Um. That actually inspired us. We
we've been working on a co op game for as
long as we've been together almost um that we've been
like honing and we're hoping to like find a home
for it. UM. Recently, I really love Azul. Have you
played as Oh my god, it's beautiful. It's this beautiful
(11:31):
game where you're like making a mosaic with these tiles
and it's very tactile. The pieces are really pleasing to
like touch, and the math of it is really fun.
Like either there's the strategy in it and there's a
certain level of like blocking other people out for being
able to do what they do. And it's the first
(11:53):
time I played it, I joke that like my computer
brain turned on because I was just like, oh my god,
I know exactly what I need to do and how
to do it, and I can set up like multiple
moves even if somebody takes the piece I need. And
like when the game was over, I like, you know,
booted down and was like what happens? Did I win? What? Where?
Where was I for the last half an hour? Um?
(12:14):
And king Domino is like that also. I feel like
king Domino is less abstract, but it's another one of
those games where it's just oh, it's just really like,
it's really satisfying. So those are two games I like
right now. And there's another game called Avocado Smash just yeah.
The container it comes and looks like an avocado. The
cards feel like avocado skin. They're like lately Yeah, they
(12:39):
have like an interesting texture to it. And it's a
dexterity game. It's just a game where when when something happens,
everybody has to slap the cards in the middle and
the last person to slap gets all the cards and
you're trying to get rid of all of your cards
and it is so fun. It is like it has
it's like a ten dollar game and it comes in
an avocado ins by company that I've never heard of.
(13:00):
Then it has no business being as fun as it is.
I love it. I'm definitely gonna check that out. Cool. Yeah. Um.
So for for listeners that are wondering, well, why why
are we talking about this on a show about feminism,
we kind of touched on it in our episode previous
with Tracy about how women in tabletop gaming for a
(13:23):
long time haven't been represented and the same is true
for women developers in the world of tabletop gaming. And
we will get into that after a quick break for
word from our sponsor, and we're back, Thank you sponsor. So, um,
(13:49):
we do have some numbers for you, a quick numbers
run down, and some of these will sound familiar, but
I think they're worth restating for this conversation. Like we
mentioned in our previous tabletop gaming, so the numbers of
players and thus the profits from tabletop gaming are going up,
and we included this number in that episode. The best
(14:09):
selling board games in sixteen were all designed by men.
In the nineteen nominees of Game of the Year awards
between sixteen, none of them identified as women. And if
we look at gen Con, one of the largest and
oldest gaming conventions sixteens, gen Con featured fifty of speakers
that were women, but inn there was literally only one
(14:32):
and there's still so much work to be done because
don't forget in one of gen CON's panels called writing
women Friendly Comic Characters, did not include any panelists that
identified as women, until ensuing backlash. Have you ever been
to gen Con? I have, yes. I We've gone four
I think the last four or five years. What's it like, Oh, yeah,
(14:53):
it's a it's a lot of white men. Yeah, it's
a lot of white guys. Um. And it's know, it's
a lot of people who don't understand why women need
to be more represented. And that's frustrating, that's super frustrating.
You know. I'm in such a bubble of people who
are more progressive that going to events like that can
(15:15):
be really jarring. Um. And that article that that you're quoting, Um,
I read it and I was completely blown away by
the numbers. I'm not I wouldn't say I'm surprised. I
think I'm I think it's just seeing the numbers is
just so overwhelming, you know. And and like I said,
(15:36):
I'm a research analyst by day, so data is my jam.
So I was like, oh my god, this article is
so great. It does such a good deep dive and like,
look at her pie charts, They're so good. But um, yeah,
gen Con is and and one of the things that's
hard about gen Con and going to pack the pin
(15:56):
your Kdexpo and other events like that is I often
get asked to be on panels and I get to
the panel and I'm the only woman on the panel,
and that I'm it makes me self conscious because it
makes me wonder if the only reason I've been invited
to the panel is because I'm a woman, and that
(16:17):
makes me feel really like crappy about myself and insecures.
I already have hardcore imposter syndrome even just being there.
And um, we did do a panel at packs some
plugged called, um, you know, women in Gaming, and we
were all white women and afterwards I was like, oh crap,
we're all white women. So you know, it's you know,
(16:38):
places like gen Con, and it's it's just it's just
so hard. It's so hard because they're it's so overwhelmingly male,
and it's so overwhelmingly the kind of men who are like,
you know, a lot of them don't have a problem
sharing the space with women until women want to have
equal representation and then they have a problem with it. Yeah.
(17:00):
One thing that came out of the conversation that Tracy
and I had about this is we both kind of,
like you were saying, shared that in our experiences it
is a much more like progressive, diverse space. But um,
Tracy was saying, because I've never been to something like
gen Con, Um, I've been a dragon Comma that's very different,
(17:23):
but something like that, where that's when she would notice like, oh,
it's mostly white dudes around, Um, so many white dudes. Yeah,
like a c of them. I did read something because
I'm also a language nerd um, and I read something
about how they were more women manning the voos at
(17:46):
gen Con and how they were talking about like changing
the language around that. I just thought that was interesting. Interesting. Yeah, yeah,
I haven't really considered that before. But yeah, I suppose
Gary guy Nact, the creator of Dungeons and Jagons, once
told Icon Magazine quote, gaming in general is a male thing.
Everybody who's tried to design a game to interest a
(18:07):
large female audience has failed, And I think that has
to do with the different thinking processes of men and women,
which is just not correct. Right now, there's so many
things wrong. I'm not even sure where to tackle. Um.
Have you, and I'm going to assume the answer to jest,
(18:29):
but have you experienced sexism in the world of tabletop
gaming or other obstacles related to it? Yeah, I've UM.
When I the first time I went to b g
G Con, which is the convention centered around dank geek, um,
I had. I had not really, I had not really
worked many conventions before that. I had. I had gone
(18:51):
to conventions, I had gone as pressed to do interviews
about video games, but I hadn't like been an exhibitor
until you know, we until we published Resistor. So when
I was at b g G, I had a guy
say to me, our company is called Cardboard Fortress Games,
so we wear like little cardboard boxes on our heads
(19:13):
just to just to be funny. And um, I like
put the box on to do a demo and this
guy was like, you were cuter without the box, and
I was just like too stunned to say anything. So
I was just like he like, you know, I didn't
know what to say. And I had another guy recently,
I had a guy. UM. In late I went to
(19:33):
an event at one of our local board game stores,
and he was a friend of the owner, and you know,
he was talking to a friend of mine who I
also happen to be talking to, and he was like, oh,
you make games. Like he turned like he didn't realize
that I was one of the game designers at the event.
He was like, oh, you make games. I was like yeah,
and he was like, oh, well, how do you know
how do you make games? And I opened my mouth
(19:54):
to answer and he said, oh, never mind, if you
can do them, I'm sure anyone can. Oh yeah. And
I it was just like cool, bye forever, and just
like walked away. And my friend also walked away because
he was like, that was really crappy. Yes, that was awful. Yeah,
it's just and and it's and it's you know, so
many predominantly white men will say to you like, well,
(20:17):
why didn't you just say something? Why didn't you just
tell them that you felt uncomfortab Why don't you just
say no? And it's like you have no concept of
how it feels in the moment, like you feel panicked,
like you you you certainly aren't going to come up
with something witty, and you certain you certainly aren't gonna
be able to say something that doesn't sound angry, and
(20:38):
you know, twenty minutes later you're like, I should have
said this, but you know there and there's also that
like fear of them getting mad and yelling at you,
you know, or or like starting a scene. So you know,
it's you know, it's it's because of the people that
I hang out with. I would say that it's been.
It hasn't been as bad as it would have been,
(21:01):
but I've definitely experienced it, like I haven't had. You know,
there there have been friends that I know who have
been harassed. I think in that article she mentioned the
thing that have net origins where someone was sexually harassed,
and that girl still gets harrassed on Twitter constantly, like
every day now, and it's like seven months later, six
(21:22):
months later, so you know, it's it's really out of control. Yeah,
And kind of off of that, because we did talk
about in the episode of Tracy about um sexual harassment
that's experienced by by women in this world. But as
(21:43):
I said myself, I have had a pretty good experience
in the tabletop gaming world. But I do think it's
interesting that for two things. One, for a very long
time I just assumed that they were not for me.
I remember recoiling almost violently when someone asked me, like,
(22:06):
do you like tabletop games? I'm like, oh no, um right,
And the second is I really love UM. I love
playing tabletop games. I have like three different groups that
do it now pretty regularly, but occasionally, because like you said,
I we're all adults and we have other responsibilities and
playing tabletop games, um, sometimes we don't get to meet
(22:30):
as often as I would like. And I am a
a single woman with like less obligations to other people
than a lot of people I'm playing with. So I'll
see an event for like, dropped by this bar and
play D and D And even without having these experiences myself,
(22:50):
I just I guess I had internalized that if I
go to something like that, I'm worried that I would
be harassed or looked down upon or just even treated differently,
and that I would it wouldn't be a fun experience
for me, or that people wouldn't be patient for me
if it's a new game, and things like that that
(23:11):
I just didn't until I put thought into it, I
didn't realize that I had those thoughts inside of me. Yeah,
I I totally get it. You know I met I
met my husband because we there was a Wizard of
the Coast was doing a thing for Fourth Edition D
and D where you could play something called Encounters, and
it was a weekly event at local board game stores
where you could just play a single encounter from a module.
(23:34):
So it's like eased you into the rules and how
to play it. And that's how I met Anthony was
I went to an Encounters and he was there and
we ended up, you know, dating. But I had a
lot I felt a lot of trepidation because I don't
do a voice during D and D, and I don't
(23:55):
necessarily get super into the character, and I am not
great improvising all the time, and sometimes I'm not you know,
on so I don't feel like I can come up
with funny, clever ideas, and I feel like everybody's just
going to think I'm dumb, and I don't always know
all the rules. So it I mean, it took playing
(24:15):
constantly and I'm I'm still on over that. You know,
we play. We have a monthly game of Fourth Edition
that we play, and then we also have a monthly
Fifth Edition game that we play that gets recorded and
goes on YouTube. I can't tell you. I can't tell
you how like that. I get nervous every single time
we record because I made the mistake of reading the
(24:36):
comments one time, and they hate me, like, I mean,
like we've grown on them. My husband I play um
Goblin Juggalos, so we're goblos. So we are obnoxious. I
mean we are really intensely out of control. And the
(24:56):
first episode I made the mistake of reading some of
the comments, and but we're like we hate her. And
I was like, why do you hate me? We're both
being goblet We're both doing this, like why do you
hate me? And I was like, I'm never reading the
comments again. I'm just never gonna do it strongly against it. Yeah.
But but the other thing is, you know we had
(25:17):
played when you think I first started dating, we played
so many role playing games that we got to a
point where we started playing Shadow Run fifth Edition. I
don't know if you're familiar with Shadow Run at all.
It is complicated. It has a very complicated rule set,
and the fifth edition of it was no exception. It
was very complicated. And I literally sat down at the
(25:37):
table and said, hey, guys, I have learned so many
new RPGs in the last couple of months that I
am not even going to bother reading the book because
I don't want to learn another one, and you guys
all keep complaining about it, which makes me realize that
it's not an enjoyable thing to learn the rules for.
So I'm just going to tell you what I want
to do. You guys tell me how many dice to roll,
and I'm just going to role play and have a
(25:59):
good time. And you know, it was one of the
best times I've had role playing because I didn't put
so much thought into like, oh, well, how can I
min max my turn and how can I be the
best character possible. I was like, no, I don't want
to do that. I just want to play some asps
and have a good time. And it was fun and
(26:19):
and I feel like letting go of some of my
self consciousness has been really hard but has made it
easier to play. And I also I have the same
feeling that you do about playing new games with new people,
new board games with new people, because you feel like
I always have that panic of what if I don't
get it? Like what if I just what if I
(26:40):
just don't rock it? And you're really doing yourself a disservice,
Like you're very smart. You do all kinds of stuff
every single day. Like we like, we do stuff that's
way harder than learning a board game every day, and
we don't have the same kind of anxiety. And it's
because we have that fear of like, oh no, somebody
might think, like somebody might judge me, and I you know,
(27:01):
I have taken to when it's my turn the first time,
if I'm playing a new game, especially with new people,
my first turn, I'll be like, okay, so just to
be clear, these are my options. And then I'll state
the options that I have, and I'll be like, but
and then I can do this right. And then if
I really don't if there's something I really don't get,
I'll be like, but what's the point of me doing
(27:21):
this thing? So I like try to make them explain
it to me while repeating everything they say so that
I'll remember it. I don't know if that's helpful to
other people, but no, it sounds like a good strategy
to me. Yeah, it helps like grind it into my brain. Yeah.
And I've found that for certain games, the rules can
(27:42):
look so overwhelming and they might be, but once you
start playing it, it doesn't feel as overwhelming. Yeah, And
you had mentioned earlier about like the impront we talked
about like the improvisation for like prepping for D and
D and stuff like that. And I think that when
you write rules, part of the problem is that sometimes
(28:04):
you get sucked into a black hole of well, how
dumb is the player? And then you end up you
really end up over writing the rules because you're like,
do I have to tell them how to draw a card?
Do I have to tell them exactly where to discard it? Well,
somebody one time asked me this question, do I have
to address it in the rule book? And that ends
up bloating the rule book? But people just get really nervous,
(28:26):
you know, Yeah, absolutely, It's kind of to me it's
kind of a frustrating thing because tabletop gaming is what's
supposed to be very fun and for me has been,
but there was all of this stress around it, and
occasionally there still is. And it's like this fun activity
that has legit health benefits. I mean, on top of
(28:50):
like it helps you be more creative, it helps the
problem solving, it helps with all this stuff. It helps
distress people to think that people are being frightened away
or intimidated by this fun thing that can be can
mean so much. Makes me angry. Yeah, it's depressing. It's
(29:12):
it's the same thing with video games. And she had
what is her is her name Trudy and that who
wrote that article, Tanya Tanya. Sorry, she had mentioned that
that happens with female gamers who play, you know, online
video games, that they like try to like pretend that
(29:32):
they're a guy, or they just stopped playing it, or
they blame themselves for being harassed, and that's so sad. Oh. Absolutely,
I've told the story on this show before. I stopped
playing online games because it became it took something that
was fun and it became a very stressful, intimidating experience.
(29:53):
And this was like middle school. Yeah, yeah, um, are
there what other problems you see in this world of
tailtop gaming? And how do you think we could make
it better? Sure? One of the most interesting things about
that article was that she talked about the art on
(30:16):
the covers and how aliens and animals are more represented
than women on those covers, and I was like, shut up.
I was so mad about that. And I think you
know when when she wrote the part about one Deck Dungeon,
how one Deck Dungeon is like prominently female. How one
(30:36):
guy was like, when you come out with a male version,
let me know and I'll play it. Like that makes
me so mad. I think that. I think that. You know,
we talked about like, well, it needs to be more
diverse and need to be more inclusive. White men need
to be educated, like like white men need to understand
like and even you know, I talk about that my
(30:56):
groups are progressive and that's true. But you know, my
husband the other day said, well, I didn't really like
Disney movies when I was a kid because I wasn't
represented in them because he you know, he's not a princess.
And then we started watching Shira and he's like, well,
I don't really like this show because it's almost all women,
so why would I want to watch it? And it's
just like, I just I just don't know what to
(31:18):
say to that, because I'm like, okay, but welcome to
my whole life where almost every single thing I've consumed
has been you know, male, and it it didn't it
didn't bother me until the last couple of years because
when I was a kid, I was like well, I
just want to play. I just want to play video games.
I don't care that every single game I'm playing I'm
(31:40):
playing as a guy. I just want to play video games.
I love video games, you know. And you know I
don't mind that I'm not representing TV shows. And you know,
you and I had talked about, well, it's because of
internalized misogyny, you know. Not only do I not mind,
I kind of don't. I kind of don't like women.
I kind of don't like myself. I kind of don't
want to see myself up there, you know, right, And
(32:01):
you know it's it's only recently that I'm like, well, no,
that would be you know, that would be really cool
to see myself represented, and it would be really cool
to have that experience. And I think that white men
view it not as they They view it as something's
being taken away from them instead of, oh, well this
(32:24):
two percent has you know, women on the horse. I'm
not going to play because I I don't see myself there.
But yeah, can you for one second put yourself into
a woman's shoes and realize that all the games that
you love, like we we aren't reflected in those I
don't know and it's so funny because I'm like, the
most important thing is to cater to white men and
educate them. But like, you know, there's only so many
(32:45):
times that you can be like, well, you know, we
should make more covers. We don't al we should have
more women. It's like, but the white men are still
going to fight against it, and I just don't know
how to get to them. I don't know how to
I don't know how to be like, hey, I'm gonna
mail all of you a copy of them? Doesn't this
for everybody? By Bell Hooks? And can you please read it?
There we go right, like everybody has. We're all in
(33:07):
a book club. Now let's all read this. Yeah, get
a kickstarter going. Yeah. You judge on a lot of
stuff that I resonated with me. I was definitely one
of those I'm not like other girls people for a
long time and I look back and I cringe, um, same,
same yeah. And I have friends that still are And
(33:28):
it bothers me so much because it's almost like what
they're saying doesn't make sense with other things they're saying
about themselves personally because they are a woman, like, well
women aren't They're just generally not as good at the X.
But I am right, it doesn't. It doesn't track UM
(33:49):
And I totally agree that it's kind of this fear
of change, of things becoming more equal, and I I
personally only I think that we're just gonna have to
We're just gonna have to keep making more diverse games.
And sorry about it if it makes you nervous, Yeah,
they just they're just so threatened. And I'm just like,
(34:12):
but can you introspect and look at that feeling of
being friended and like explain it? Can you explain it?
And it's it's all tied into Trump being elected and
we could just talk about this garbage forever, but like
it's super hard to see it as a as a
general resurgence. It almost feels like in the world, you know,
(34:35):
but so like to still it down to just tabletop gaming,
it just feels like a microcosm of everything else that's
going on. You know. I totally agree, and that's we're
talking about tabletop gaming that we're talking about so much more. Um.
If we if we look kind of at some numbers
(34:58):
from that study that we've been mentioning in this it
was a very recent day. It came out in December
eighteen and it was called Analog Game Studies by Tanya Pabudha,
and it was a sweeping look at the top two
hundred games on Board Game Geek, which is correct me
if I'm wrong, but it's sort of like I am dB,
but for board games. Yes, yeah, absolutely, um and it
(35:21):
it found that generally a majority of board game designers
are white men, only two point four percent were white women,
and only a little of a four percent were non
white men. Of the two hundred games, only seven were
designed solely or jointly by women, and that number is
twelve for men of colors. So those are very stark numbers. Yeah,
(35:44):
it's crazy. Game designer Nicki Valens was the sole female
designer for the twenty second ranked game Mansions of Madness
Second Edition from S and Valence was a co designer
for the number forty seven game Eldritch Horror from Peggy
Chastinet was the code designer for the legacy game t
(36:05):
I M. E. Stories Time Stories from and Suzanne Goldberg
was a co designer for the Sherleck Holmes Consulting detective
The Thames Murders. In other cases and numbers sixty five
on the b g G Top two hundred, the one
seventy nine ranked Exit the Game, the Abandoned cabin from
(36:25):
and one ranked Village from eleven. We're both jointly designed
by Inca Brand and Flaminia Brazini was jointly responsible for
the design of the forty two ranked Lorenzo Il Magnifico
from So that's just not a lot of diversity women
(36:46):
represented in those the top two hundred games. Um. When
it comes to illustrators, the numbers are slightly better, but
only slightly. Around ten percent of illustrators of these top
two hundred games where white women and around seven percent
or women of color. So we've got a long ways
to go to make things more equal. Seriously. Yeah. Um,
(37:10):
So we have a little bit more for you, some
some advice for making these things more equal. But first
we have one more ad for our word from our
sponsor m H and we're back, Thank you, sponsor. So,
(37:32):
one thing that I wanted to ask you about, Nicole was, um,
what what about you? What do you have any projects
on the horizon that you are excited about? Yes? So, uh,
Anthony and I are working on a game that is
tentatively at the moment entitled Dance Hall mash Up. It's
a game about dancing. It's not about dancing, well, it's
(37:54):
about dancing quickly. UM. We a friend of our, Jason Tagmier,
has UM. He has a Patreon for his board game development.
He basically puts out UM wallet games. They're like small
games that are eighteen cards. They come in a little wallet.
They're all like uniformly the same size. But he was
also doing something on his Patreon where he was doing
postcard games. So the first year it was Cult Films
(38:18):
and you had to have the rules on the postcard
and then you would play. The components would be things
that you could easily find in the house. And then
the next year it was One Hit Wonders, So we
did one for Spinny right around m HM, and the
one Hit Wonders year was play everything with the postcard.
So each corner of the postcard was a different dance
(38:38):
move from the Spinny right around video, and one person
would basically spin the postcard onto the table and then
whichever corner was facing them, they would yell out that
dance move, and everybody did the dance moves as fast
as possible and then slap the postcard and the last
person slap would be out. It was it was a
game that was for like a bunch of people, and
then we were like, you know what, we could make
this but with lots of dance moves. So yeah, we
(39:02):
spent an entire weekend just watching YouTube videos about how
to describe how to do dances and then made a
ton of cards and we pitched it to some publishers
in November, and we have two publishers who are really
seriously interested in it, so I'm hoping that is the
next game that we have come out. We've actually, uh
so my husband was diagnosed with cancer last year, so
(39:24):
we've had like we had kind of a year where
we didn't do anything, and I think we're both feeling
the pressure of, you know, we have to get back
into it. We have to get games out because we
published Resistor and then the next year we published two games.
So we were like, oh, next year we'll published three games,
and then life was like like I'm sorry to hear that,
(39:45):
so thank you. So yeah, so we're just like we
have a ton of prototypes that you know, we've been
shopping around and this is where it comes into play
about pitching the publishers. When we went to pack some
plugged in December. You know, we had five games, we
have five prototypes that we were just pitching to any
publisher we can get an empoyment with. We were just like, hey,
(40:05):
we sit down with you cool five games, and we
had the pitch down to like ten minutes. We really
here you go two minutes a game. So we we
have some some pretty promising leads there. Oh that sounds
so fun. Thank you. I'm a big I love any
kind of game that gets you up and moving, and
I love dancing, and I'm terrible at it, so this
(40:26):
sounds perfect for me. Yeah, I also love all those
things that I'm also terrible at dancing, so I totally
get it. Well, keep me posted about that. Oh absolutely So.
For for anyone who's listening, any any woman who's interested
in getting involved in in the world of designing a
(40:46):
tabletop game, UM, do you have any advice or tips
for them? Yeah? Um, for there's so many layers to this. Um.
If you, I mean, if you've already got a game
and you want to try to you know, get it played,
get get your prototype tested. Um, there's something called Unpubed,
the Unpublished Game Network. It's unpubed dot net. UM. If
(41:08):
you go there and you make an account and you
put your games into there, you can kind of keep checked.
They have events all over the world, so they have
these things called unpubbed minis, and basically you go to
a local board game store and if you're you registered
for it, you go to a local board game store
and then you just show your prototype and and you know,
people come play your prototype, give your feedback. They have
feedback forms you can even print out. UM. There's also
(41:31):
if you're on the East coast, there's an event called Metatopia,
which is in North Jersey, and that is literally just
four days of play testing prototypes and it's very heavily scheduled.
If you you know, say you're like, okay, I want
to have five play tests of my game, you can
actually request one play test to just be designers, so
then you can get really good feedback because it's only
(41:52):
designers playing your game. There are also, you know, there's
there's all kinds of playtesting communities. We have one in
Philadelphia that is based on a community in Boston. It's
called the Gamemaker's Guild. And there we're basically we're basically
their first franchise is what I like to joke. So,
so we have Gamemaker's Guild Philadelphia, there's one in Connecticut. Um,
(42:14):
there's also, uh, if you're in you know, the Northwest,
there's play Tests Northwest, which I think is in Seattle. Um,
Emma Larkins runs the play test group in Seattle. Also,
um gosh, there's just so there's also like proto Speel,
which is another thing that's sort of like unpubed. And
then there's you know events like Packs the Penny or
(42:35):
kid Expo. There's there's one that's dedicated solely to board games,
and Unpubed usually gets a booth at these events, so
you can register for unpubbed at these events, which is
really cool. Um. There's also gen Con and um, I
think d g G Con. They have this really intense
(42:56):
thing that's called publisher speed dating, which is yeah, it's
as horrifying as it sounds. Um, you have like five
to ten minutes to pitch your game to a publisher
and then the publishers just switched tables. So, um, it's
really good practice to get your pitch down to you know,
ten minutes UM. On a on a more granular level,
(43:16):
if you're looking for ways to actually physically make your prototype. UM,
there's a site called the Game Crafter and they have
basically everything you could ever need to make a game,
so you can actually, you know, upload all your art,
order all the pieces, and then order one single copy
of your game. It won't be cheap, but it'll give
(43:39):
you a really nice looking, professional looking prototype that you
can then bring to events like this UM and like, honestly,
if you're a person listening and you're like, oh my god,
I live in the middle of nowhere, or oh my god,
I'm way too much of an introvert to try to
get into this stuff without knowing someone, I tell people
all the time whenever I'm on panels, like please please
(44:01):
email me, please reach out to me. I'm happy to
like find you someone connect you with someone you know.
I don't. I don't do like mentorships or anything, but
I feel like basically what I'm doing is kind of
like a mentorship is just not officially called that. UM.
There's also a group called board Game Broads on Facebook,
(44:23):
so if you they are actually trying to run a
specific mentorship program. So if people really want to, you know,
have something that is more targeted towards specific help that
they need. That's a great place to start. Those are
all great resources. Thank you. Are there any um developers
(44:50):
that are games that you're excited for coming out in
the future. I made a list of lots of women
in board games, but I don't know of anything that's
ming out soon. Suzanne Sinsley, who is half of Cardboard Edison,
She's got a game called Ceylon c E y l
O N that I think premiered at Essen, which is
(45:12):
a big, huge board game event in Germany. And I
don't think that one's available state side because my husband
keeps asking me when we can order it. So that's
that's one game that we're definitely really really really eager
to get our hands on. Other than salein I don't
have any specific board games that I'm like super hyped
to get my hands on. Well you mentioned the list, Yeah,
(45:35):
I do so. Um. Heather O'Neill and Heather Wilson are
they're part of Ninth Level Games. Um they have. Ninth
Level Games is probably most famous for Cobal Date My Baby,
which is a role playing game, but the two Heathers
made a game called Schrodinger's Cats, which is like one
of my favorite party games of all time. And they're
(45:58):
Heather and Neils working on Pavlov's Dogs, as you can imagine,
which is going to be another game that they're coming
out with. They also just came out with a game
called Maple Party, which is a super fun like little
party game, co op party game. Bonnie Newbauer is another
really amazing game designer. She's local to Philadelphia. I don't
know if she has anything published yet, but I would
definitely keep an eye out for her because her we've
(46:20):
played so many of her prototypes that are really excellent.
Mary Martha for Dan, she made a game called The
Ultimate clap Back, which is also a lot of fun.
That one was on Kickstarter. UM. Carol Mertz is another
great one. She She made a game called Pass the Book,
which is a game about corporate responsibility, which I pull
it out sometimes at parties and my friends are like, Nope,
I'm not at work. You can't make me play that.
(46:43):
I won't play a game about about asking people about
their emails. Um. There's another great game called Someone Has Died,
which is made by a d Slippeck and Liz Roach.
Um Banana Chan makes RPGs and LARPs. She is absolutely incredible. UM.
And then for artists, Uh, my friend Bridget in Delicado.
(47:04):
She was co designer of a game called The Plot Thickens,
which one one of the Hasbro. Hasbro did a bunch
of game design contests for a few years and um,
The Plot Thickens won one of those game contests. She
does graphic design for a e G and Whiz Kids.
So she did art for Dungeon Hustle. UM. I can't
remember any of the other games that she's done art
(47:26):
for now I feel terrible. UM. And Heather winter Vaughne
did art for a game called Beneath Nexus and also
for the game Kids on Bikes, which is an RPG.
That's that's pretty famous. Um. There's also um Sherry Spirou
who she's the owner of ad Magic and Breaking Games.
Ad Magic is one of the biggest board game printers
(47:48):
in the world and Breaking Games is her publishing arm.
So she is a badass lady. She's really amazing. There's
also I have two friends who are a Kickstarter train,
Garrettano and Anya Combs, who are both just beautiful, wonderful people. Oh,
and I also had another name on here UM that's
Sobel who does illustrations for so so, so so many
(48:13):
board games that are out there right now, so many
of the any board games. And her artwork is just beautiful.
She did herbaceous and I forget what else. So everything
I just said it sounds like Bolks. I'm like, oh,
her work is great. And then I'm like, here's a
single game. I believe you. I believe you, I think
you check out. Yeah, that's one point I would love
(48:34):
for these episodes, the one that focused on playing and
now this one in development. Um. At one point I
would love for listeners to take away who maybe haven't
had much experience in this world is there's so much
out there. There's so much variety. And I have a
group of friends that used to tell me that they
hated playing tabletop games and they hated a specific type,
(49:00):
and I've been able to introduce them. They really didn't
like um competitive games, but I've found co op games
that they love, and now we play board games almost
every time we hang out. So there is a lot
out there. If you don't have if you haven't had
good experiences, but you've only had a little bit and
maybe we've convinced you that you might want to give
(49:22):
it another tribe. There's just so many options. There are
also like beautiful games that they're not necessarily cooperative, and
they're they're not competitive, but they're not cooperative. Like uh
m Al Larkins, who I mentioned earlier, runs a places
commedia in Seattle. She made a game I think it's
called and Then We Died and it's a very artistic
game about like communing with ghosts basically, and you're like
(49:45):
like putting these cards down and putting words together, and
you're all building a story together, and that's what the
plot Pickens is. Also the plot Pickens is you're all
using keywords and you're each individually making a story, but
it all works together, and you get bonus points for
like paying attention to what other people are saying in
their story and then adding their pieces to your own story.
So it's like, you know, more narrative driven games. And
(50:08):
there's also games like you know, Fog of Love and
and Then We Held Hands, which are emotional experiences. So
I feel like there's a lot more out there than
just Risk and Twilight Struggle. Yeah, and this very same
group of friends that didn't like competitive games. One of
their favorite games is Dixit, which is competitive, but it's
(50:28):
kind of like a key competitive. It's a relax competitive
and it's beautiful. I got my coworkers addicted to telestrations.
Oh yeah, yeah, that's a good one. It's hilarious. Yeah. Um.
I like to end episodes like this with a very
simple question, how do you think we could make the
(50:50):
tabletop gaming world more inclusive, either on the playing side
or development side. I think that, um, you know, it's
for for the development side. The advice that I give
to everyone is if you have an idea, just make it.
And it's really I know, it's really hard to get
over that fear, and it's really hard to put yourself
(51:11):
out there. You know. I I have a lot of
fear putting myself out there as a game designer and
as a writer. And what the The thing about the
community of developers is that there are a lot of
awesome people and a lot of people pay it forward
because they wouldn't be here without the help of others.
Like when we got started, you know, I mentioned Jason
(51:32):
Tagmire who does wallet games, and he said, oh, talk
to my friend Christopher Bedell when you go to packs
and he didn't tell us, you know, talk to my
friend who's the president of the company that made senseil
as the multiverse. He just said, talked to my friend
and Christopher Bdell and then we met him and we
were like, oh, my god, you're super important. This is intimidating.
And he was so nice to us. He was like, oh,
(51:52):
only have five minutes, talked to us for twenty minutes,
gave us a bunch of advice, like and and now
we're now we're like friends, you know. And so many
people were so generous with their time that that's how
I treat people like That's why I run the Gamemaker's Guild.
That's why I you know, try to do as much
as I can. That's why I tell people like, you know,
please reach out, because I think that that's what people
(52:15):
need to put themselves out there creatively. And I think
that goes the same for playing games, because a lot
of people have that fear, like you said, of playing
competitive games, and also they have a fear of of
looking stupid. And I think that if people were a
little gentler with how they handle people, it would be
(52:35):
it would be more welcoming. I mean for us, it's
it's been pretty welcoming, and we've definitely hit some roadbumps.
But I think that it was people's kindness that that helps.
Oh God, here I go again. I'm like, if everybody
would just be more kind Like, Um, it's funny that
you say that, because I am an extremely competitive person
(52:56):
and I for this. So I have like three groups
friends I play games with, and for this group of
friends that didn't like competitive games, I had to learn
to chill out a bit when I play with them,
and they have to dial it back and that's hard. Yeah,
And it was hard at first, and I still sometimes
(53:18):
find myself getting angry because I just it's really funny.
But I'm like, you guys are not being the right
kind of competitive. But that's my own thing. It's supposed
to be fun for everyone playing, and it is. I
have a good time with him. I just that was
something I had to like look at myself and say, well,
if I want to enjoy this activity with friends of mine,
(53:40):
then I need to modify my behavior a little bit. Um.
So yeah, I would say it's worth looking at your
own playing habits, At least in my case, I would.
I would argue, you know, if you have a group
of friends that won't play games with you, why is
that right? I think A good think, A good litmus
(54:01):
test for competitiveness is Bonanza. Have you played Bonanza? No?
I haven't. Bonanza is one of the best. Like, we
love Bonanza and we hate the art. We love it
so much and hate the art so much that Anthony
one year, for an anniversary gift, made me a copy
of the game on Gamecraft with cat illustrations. He replaced
(54:24):
all of the beans in this bean farming game with
adorable cats. He got like the ratio right, He did
everything and just printed so that we would play it more.
But Bonanza is really cutthroat, and it's like it's really
about like screwing other people over and like you can
kind of like make alliances, but like you don't have
(54:46):
to honor them at all. And like if you play
with a group of people who are all super nice
to each other and they're like giving each other cards
and being really kind to each other, like Anthony can't
stand it. Anthony's like, y'all are playing this game wrong.
So it's funny. And sometimes I'll play with people who
are who are like really friendly to each other. And
those are the kind of people that you don't want
to play competitive games or you want to play like
(55:07):
a cooperative game with. But then I'll play it with
Anthony and his friends and they'll be like, you know,
I would stab you for a cocoa bean right now,
and I'm like, cool, that's we have a really good friendship.
I love this. So it is like it's it's reading
the room, it's reading the people that you're with, and
it's and and like you said before, there's just so
there's such a there's so much rich diversity in mechanics
(55:32):
now that you don't need to play a game that's
gonna end friendships. Yes, yes, I would advise against it.
And I do think that that that's a great point
reading the room and also just the number one one
of the rules of the Internet. It's don't be a jerk,
like I'm competitive, but I'm nice about it, or at
(55:52):
least like there are certain people that are competitive and
so mean that I won't play with them, right, And
those are like the sexist misogynists that I was afraid
existed in this like D and D world that I
didn't go to UM that's one thing. That's that's nobody's
having fun except them, and maybe they're like specific group
of friends. But um, I do think that there is
(56:14):
a vast array of game types and mechanics, like you
were saying, so that you can find a game for
you and your group, your specific group you're playing with. Yeah,
my husband will tell you that I'm salty when I lose,
and that's that's true. There there are definitely times when
I'm like, I'm gonna flip this table. Oh we have
(56:39):
Like there was one session of dn D that will
not we won't speak about it. It's great, I love it,
oh man. In our five game that was like recorded
on YouTube, like our Chaos Sorcerer, like that the bar
on fire and almost killed me and I was like, yo, Ryan,
real life, I will actually kill you in real life
(57:00):
and view that again, like don't do that again. And
like Anthony was like, you do not want to read
the comments on that episode because people got real mad
at you. And I was like he almost killed me. Yeah,
but come on, but yeah, I got I got, I
get extra salty. We don't talk about that one. It's funny.
How how invested in really good? Yes? Well, thank you
(57:22):
so much for joining us. This has been so lovely. Yeah,
thank you so much for having me. This is great.
Where can people find you? So? Um on Twitter? Um,
I'm CB four on Instagram, It's the whole thing. It's
Cardboard Fortress Games at Instagram. And seriously, I I really
(57:42):
meant it about people if they wanted to reach out,
I'm my email addresses Cardboard Fortress Games at gmail dot com.
If you want to talk about you know, how to
go to events, how to you know? Even things like help,
how do I do a kickstarter? How do I get
in touch with you know the press? How do I
know do this? If I don't know the answer to
(58:02):
your question, there's a really good chance that I know
a person who has the answer to your question. Yeah.
That is so valuable. So anyone listening that's interested, I
would take Nicole up on that. And in the meantime,
if if any of you listening are working on games yourself,
(58:23):
we would love to hear about it. You can email
us at mom Stuff at how stuff works dot com,
and you can find us on Twitter at mom Stuff
podcast and on Instagram at stuff I've Never told you.
Thanks as always to our producer Andrew Howard and thanks
to you for listening.
Hi, this is Annie, and you're listening to stuff I've
never told you. As we mentioned in our part one
episode on tabletop gaming with Tracy V. Wilson, we were
(00:27):
going to do a follow up on tabletop gaming development,
and here is that episode, and Tracy put me in
touch with our guest today, tabletop game developer Nicole. Hi. Nicole, Hi, Annie,
thank you so much for joining us today. Yeah, thanks
for having me. Could you tell us a little bit
(00:47):
about yourself? Sure? So. I am one half of the
game development team Cardboard Fortress Games. Um, it's me and
my husband. We made Resistor and Lasers and um a
game called Atari Atari cine Feed, which is a game
based on the old arcade game which is pretty funny.
(01:08):
Um and uh yeah, we have like a ton of
other games that are in development right now. But um yeah,
I don't know what else to say. I'm like, uh,
and during the day, I am a research analyst. I
don't know if that's interesting, of course it is. I
love I love research. I'm such a research nerd. How
did you get into tabletop game design? So? Um, gosh,
(01:32):
about nine years ago and like two thousand, I started
writing video game reviews and through that I got involved
in the local video game development scene. Um, I live
in Philadelphia and there were way more video game developers
than I could have even imagined. And we ended up
starting like a little group that met once a month,
(01:52):
and then that turned into like a weekly game dev
meeting kind of thing. Was called Philly DEEV Knight and
my husband and I we had we started dating in
and we would go to these meetings and there would
be game jams. Do you know what a game jam is? Idea,
but I would love if you could explain it. Sure, sure, sure,
So game jam is just everybody basically has the same
(02:15):
topic or the same general idea to work from, and
you have a set amount of time to make a game.
So ours was we have twenty four hours to make
a game, and the theme was picking Oasis song title
and make a game out of it, right, And I
was like, Wow, that doesn't sound interesting, And then I
looked up Oasis song titles and I was like, oh
my god, these are so bizarre. So my husband and
(02:38):
I were like, well, we can't make a video game,
but let's make a board game because we love playing
board games. So we're like, why don't we just make
a board game, and we ended up making a board
game that won the jam, and that is like where
it kind of all started. We ended up like figuring
out how to actually make the game and then putting
it on Kickstarter, and then we learned how to work
with publishers and that that was kind of like the
(03:01):
spark that started at all. May I ask what Oasis
song title you went with? Sure, roll It Over was
the name of this song title, and that, Um, yeah,
So the game is, um, it's called Resistant. It's like
there's red lines blue lines or red and blue lines
on each card, and each card is double sided and
there's a different image on each side and you're trying
(03:24):
to like connect your lines to go across words. So
if I was the red player, I would try to
get like a full red line going all the way
across the board. And Anthony, my husband, was like, oh,
we should make a game where we should use the
title roll it Over and use a game where you
have to like flip cards over and you're using both
sides of the card. So we ended up not keeping
the title, but that was the song. Um. Could you
(03:50):
describe more in depth the what goes into making a game? UM, well,
I'm just very curious and I yeah, that's your sure, sure, sure,
um We've had um there there's like a big divide
in the industry where it's like, well do you work
with theme first with mechanics first? And I feel like
(04:11):
we have kind of done both. Um. Like obviously with Resistor,
we had like a theme and a mechanic sort of
at the same time. The mechanic came person then we
ended up adding the theme because we were like, well,
what can we put on this? We put you know,
trains on this, connecting train lines or and we were
like what about you know, computer circuits, and we're like, yeah,
it could be like war games and that that was
(04:34):
really funny because we were like, let's do war games
at old eighties movie and then we turned the TV
on and it was on TV and we were like, well,
if that's a sign. But for the most part, it's
you know, Anthony and I will kind of like go
back and forth about an idea, and then if we
I think the idea is like viable, then we'll kind
of like start making it physically, like we'll cut pieces out,
(04:54):
or we'll just like you know, drawn on index cards
or and over the last five six year as we
have gotten so many different prototyping tools, like we have
you know, we bought blank cards, and we have all
different kinds of dice and like we've cannibalized old games
for pieces. So once we kind of play it a
(05:15):
few times, that can kind of show us like whether
or not we should keep going, whether we should hone it.
And it's a little bit tough because Anthony's a graphic designer,
so he also wants to make the prototypes like look
really beautiful right away. You know, if he makes a
lot of cards and they look beautiful and take to
make them and then you know, one major thing is
(05:37):
wrong that's on each card. You know, he doesn't want
to just cross it out if you had made them
on like index cards or blank cards and you could
just cross it out and you know, resleeve it. So
a lot of people will use um, you know, they'll
use the bare minimum pieces. They'll use index cards or
regular cards, and their intent is to get the mechanics
down and pitch it to a publisher and then the
(05:59):
publisher will take care of everything else. So it's kind
of different for everybody. Some people go into it thinking
like I'm working on this game. I start with an idea,
then I make the physical prototype, and then I'm going
to kind of be doing everything myself and making it
look a certain way. And other people are like, no,
I just want to do the most basic prototyping I can,
and then I'm going to offload it to somebody else
(06:21):
who's going to do all the other stuff. Is that
sort of the normal pipeline or the traditional pipeline? I
guess like you would design a game and maybe have
a prototype and then you would show it to a
publisher and try to get them to to buy it
and to make it. Or is there like a lot
more kickstarter type things now and self publishing. I think
(06:42):
that a lot of people are self publishing, and I
think a lot of people are self publishing because they
aren't sure how to get to a publisher. Doesn't I
don't know if that makes sense. But we I mean,
now that we've been doing this for so long, I
think that a lot of the people that we know
are death only the kind of people who pitched to publishers,
and we've become those people because we don't want to
(07:05):
do a kickstarter. We don't want to have to worry about,
you know, distribution and having all those games in our
house and going to the post office and all that stuff,
which is really overwhelming to me. Yeah. Yeah, I think
I think part of it is um some people just
(07:26):
want to do the game development part and and and
once you get to a certain point, you become privileged
enough that you can just do that because you have
set up the groundwork to have pipelines to publishers and
stuff like that and other people, you know. I think
I think kickstarter is often how people start, and then
once they kind of get to know the industry, they
can decide if they want to try to pursue working
(07:47):
with a publisher which also has its own you know,
hosts of pros and cons, because you're going to get
less money and you're going to have less control over
how the game is going to look and stuff like that. Yeah.
As someone who's like dipped my toe in the world
of publishing books, it sounds like a very similar similar thing.
(08:08):
I mentioned on this show before that I am in
the process of preparing to run a D and D
campaign for the first time. I love it. I'm so nervous,
but I'm like making props and I'm doing all this stuff,
and one of my favorite and most frightening aspects of it,
(08:29):
honestly is it's almost like psychology in a way because
you're having to think of what will people probably do
and then they probably won't do that anyway, But oh,
they won't do it. They won't do it. They're not
going to do it. I know, and I'm so nervous.
But it's just this aspect of planning the game that
(08:51):
I didn't really anticipate. Are there things like that that
you found in tabletop game development? Oh? Man, yeah, absolutely.
With running a D and D game, it's it's so
much about improvisation, and like there's so little that you
can like, like, it's about improvisation and adaptation, but there's
(09:13):
so little that you can then apply to another game
because it's like all you can do is hone your
ability to improvise. I don't know if that makes sense,
but with with tabletop game development, um part of it
is watching other people player game and learning what works
and what doesn't work by watching them player game. Like
you could have an intention and then if people consistently
(09:37):
read a rule in a different way than you intended it,
then you either need to rewrite that rule, or you
need to figure out a way to adapt to how
they're playing it because that's more intuitive to them. That
makes sense. Did you ever is this something you ever
imagined you would be doing? No? Now, I when I
was younger, I thought that I would be right books.
(10:00):
Like I thought I was going to write a book,
you know. That was my like goal in high school,
in college, and then when I got really into reviewing
for video games, I did, like start to dabble in.
I did some writing for video games, I did some
editing for video games, and then I was super hype
about that because I that's another passion that I've had
is is video games. I love playing them and being
(10:21):
in those worlds. But I never imagined that I would
be making board games. It's it blows me away on
a pretty regular basis. Do you have any any favorite
tabletop games or any of that inspired you? Yeah? Absolutely.
The first The first one that really inspired my husband
and I is pandemic or familiar with pandemic. I love pandemic.
(10:43):
It's so great. Right, have you say pandemic legacy? No?
But I got it after speaking to Chasey and she
told me she was a part of the like test
t like, Okay, I'm going to go out right after
this and buy it perfect. Yeah, Pandemic Legacy is super good.
It's fun. We're we're part way in the season two.
The only fans hard about it is getting a group
together to consistently play it as adult because everybody is
(11:07):
an adult with important, stupid crap to do. But yeah,
we we love Pandemic. Um. That actually inspired us. We
we've been working on a co op game for as
long as we've been together almost um that we've been
like honing and we're hoping to like find a home
for it. UM. Recently, I really love Azul. Have you
played as Oh my god, it's beautiful. It's this beautiful
(11:31):
game where you're like making a mosaic with these tiles
and it's very tactile. The pieces are really pleasing to
like touch, and the math of it is really fun.
Like either there's the strategy in it and there's a
certain level of like blocking other people out for being
able to do what they do. And it's the first
(11:53):
time I played it, I joke that like my computer
brain turned on because I was just like, oh my god,
I know exactly what I need to do and how
to do it, and I can set up like multiple
moves even if somebody takes the piece I need. And
like when the game was over, I like, you know,
booted down and was like what happens? Did I win? What? Where?
Where was I for the last half an hour? Um?
(12:14):
And king Domino is like that also. I feel like
king Domino is less abstract, but it's another one of
those games where it's just oh, it's just really like,
it's really satisfying. So those are two games I like
right now. And there's another game called Avocado Smash just yeah.
The container it comes and looks like an avocado. The
cards feel like avocado skin. They're like lately Yeah, they
(12:39):
have like an interesting texture to it. And it's a
dexterity game. It's just a game where when when something happens,
everybody has to slap the cards in the middle and
the last person to slap gets all the cards and
you're trying to get rid of all of your cards
and it is so fun. It is like it has
it's like a ten dollar game and it comes in
an avocado ins by company that I've never heard of.
(13:00):
Then it has no business being as fun as it is.
I love it. I'm definitely gonna check that out. Cool. Yeah. Um.
So for for listeners that are wondering, well, why why
are we talking about this on a show about feminism,
we kind of touched on it in our episode previous
with Tracy about how women in tabletop gaming for a
(13:23):
long time haven't been represented and the same is true
for women developers in the world of tabletop gaming. And
we will get into that after a quick break for
word from our sponsor, and we're back, Thank you sponsor. So, um,
(13:49):
we do have some numbers for you, a quick numbers
run down, and some of these will sound familiar, but
I think they're worth restating for this conversation. Like we
mentioned in our previous tabletop gaming, so the numbers of
players and thus the profits from tabletop gaming are going up,
and we included this number in that episode. The best
(14:09):
selling board games in sixteen were all designed by men.
In the nineteen nominees of Game of the Year awards
between sixteen, none of them identified as women. And if
we look at gen Con, one of the largest and
oldest gaming conventions sixteens, gen Con featured fifty of speakers
that were women, but inn there was literally only one
(14:32):
and there's still so much work to be done because
don't forget in one of gen CON's panels called writing
women Friendly Comic Characters, did not include any panelists that
identified as women, until ensuing backlash. Have you ever been
to gen Con? I have, yes. I We've gone four
I think the last four or five years. What's it like, Oh, yeah,
(14:53):
it's a it's a lot of white men. Yeah, it's
a lot of white guys. Um. And it's know, it's
a lot of people who don't understand why women need
to be more represented. And that's frustrating, that's super frustrating.
You know. I'm in such a bubble of people who
are more progressive that going to events like that can
(15:15):
be really jarring. Um. And that article that that you're quoting, Um,
I read it and I was completely blown away by
the numbers. I'm not I wouldn't say I'm surprised. I
think I'm I think it's just seeing the numbers is
just so overwhelming, you know. And and like I said,
(15:36):
I'm a research analyst by day, so data is my jam.
So I was like, oh my god, this article is
so great. It does such a good deep dive and like,
look at her pie charts, They're so good. But um, yeah,
gen Con is and and one of the things that's
hard about gen Con and going to pack the pin
(15:56):
your Kdexpo and other events like that is I often
get asked to be on panels and I get to
the panel and I'm the only woman on the panel,
and that I'm it makes me self conscious because it
makes me wonder if the only reason I've been invited
to the panel is because I'm a woman, and that
(16:17):
makes me feel really like crappy about myself and insecures.
I already have hardcore imposter syndrome even just being there.
And um, we did do a panel at packs some
plugged called, um, you know, women in Gaming, and we
were all white women and afterwards I was like, oh crap,
we're all white women. So you know, it's you know,
(16:38):
places like gen Con, and it's it's just it's just
so hard. It's so hard because they're it's so overwhelmingly male,
and it's so overwhelmingly the kind of men who are like,
you know, a lot of them don't have a problem
sharing the space with women until women want to have
equal representation and then they have a problem with it. Yeah.
(17:00):
One thing that came out of the conversation that Tracy
and I had about this is we both kind of,
like you were saying, shared that in our experiences it
is a much more like progressive, diverse space. But um,
Tracy was saying, because I've never been to something like
gen Con, Um, I've been a dragon Comma that's very different,
(17:23):
but something like that, where that's when she would notice like, oh,
it's mostly white dudes around, Um, so many white dudes. Yeah,
like a c of them. I did read something because
I'm also a language nerd um, and I read something
about how they were more women manning the voos at
(17:46):
gen Con and how they were talking about like changing
the language around that. I just thought that was interesting. Interesting. Yeah, yeah,
I haven't really considered that before. But yeah, I suppose
Gary guy Nact, the creator of Dungeons and Jagons, once
told Icon Magazine quote, gaming in general is a male thing.
Everybody who's tried to design a game to interest a
(18:07):
large female audience has failed, And I think that has
to do with the different thinking processes of men and women,
which is just not correct. Right now, there's so many
things wrong. I'm not even sure where to tackle. Um.
Have you, and I'm going to assume the answer to jest,
(18:29):
but have you experienced sexism in the world of tabletop
gaming or other obstacles related to it? Yeah, I've UM.
When I the first time I went to b g
G Con, which is the convention centered around dank geek, um,
I had. I had not really, I had not really
worked many conventions before that. I had. I had gone
(18:51):
to conventions, I had gone as pressed to do interviews
about video games, but I hadn't like been an exhibitor
until you know, we until we published Resistor. So when
I was at b g G, I had a guy
say to me, our company is called Cardboard Fortress Games,
so we wear like little cardboard boxes on our heads
(19:13):
just to just to be funny. And um, I like
put the box on to do a demo and this
guy was like, you were cuter without the box, and
I was just like too stunned to say anything. So
I was just like he like, you know, I didn't
know what to say. And I had another guy recently,
I had a guy. UM. In late I went to
(19:33):
an event at one of our local board game stores,
and he was a friend of the owner, and you know,
he was talking to a friend of mine who I
also happen to be talking to, and he was like, oh,
you make games. Like he turned like he didn't realize
that I was one of the game designers at the event.
He was like, oh, you make games. I was like yeah,
and he was like, oh, well, how do you know
how do you make games? And I opened my mouth
(19:54):
to answer and he said, oh, never mind, if you
can do them, I'm sure anyone can. Oh yeah. And
I it was just like cool, bye forever, and just
like walked away. And my friend also walked away because
he was like, that was really crappy. Yes, that was awful. Yeah,
it's just and and it's and it's you know, so
many predominantly white men will say to you like, well,
(20:17):
why didn't you just say something? Why didn't you just
tell them that you felt uncomfortab Why don't you just
say no? And it's like you have no concept of
how it feels in the moment, like you feel panicked,
like you you you certainly aren't going to come up
with something witty, and you certain you certainly aren't gonna
be able to say something that doesn't sound angry, and
(20:38):
you know, twenty minutes later you're like, I should have
said this, but you know there and there's also that
like fear of them getting mad and yelling at you,
you know, or or like starting a scene. So you know,
it's you know, it's it's because of the people that
I hang out with. I would say that it's been.
It hasn't been as bad as it would have been,
(21:01):
but I've definitely experienced it, like I haven't had. You know,
there there have been friends that I know who have
been harassed. I think in that article she mentioned the
thing that have net origins where someone was sexually harassed,
and that girl still gets harrassed on Twitter constantly, like
every day now, and it's like seven months later, six
(21:22):
months later, so you know, it's it's really out of control. Yeah,
And kind of off of that, because we did talk
about in the episode of Tracy about um sexual harassment
that's experienced by by women in this world. But as
(21:43):
I said myself, I have had a pretty good experience
in the tabletop gaming world. But I do think it's
interesting that for two things. One, for a very long
time I just assumed that they were not for me.
I remember recoiling almost violently when someone asked me, like,
(22:06):
do you like tabletop games? I'm like, oh no, um right,
And the second is I really love UM. I love
playing tabletop games. I have like three different groups that
do it now pretty regularly, but occasionally, because like you said,
I we're all adults and we have other responsibilities and
playing tabletop games, um, sometimes we don't get to meet
(22:30):
as often as I would like. And I am a
a single woman with like less obligations to other people
than a lot of people I'm playing with. So I'll
see an event for like, dropped by this bar and
play D and D And even without having these experiences myself,
(22:50):
I just I guess I had internalized that if I
go to something like that, I'm worried that I would
be harassed or looked down upon or just even treated differently,
and that I would it wouldn't be a fun experience
for me, or that people wouldn't be patient for me
if it's a new game, and things like that that
(23:11):
I just didn't until I put thought into it, I
didn't realize that I had those thoughts inside of me. Yeah,
I I totally get it. You know I met I
met my husband because we there was a Wizard of
the Coast was doing a thing for Fourth Edition D
and D where you could play something called Encounters, and
it was a weekly event at local board game stores
where you could just play a single encounter from a module.
(23:34):
So it's like eased you into the rules and how
to play it. And that's how I met Anthony was
I went to an Encounters and he was there and
we ended up, you know, dating. But I had a
lot I felt a lot of trepidation because I don't
do a voice during D and D, and I don't
(23:55):
necessarily get super into the character, and I am not
great improvising all the time, and sometimes I'm not you know,
on so I don't feel like I can come up
with funny, clever ideas, and I feel like everybody's just
going to think I'm dumb, and I don't always know
all the rules. So it I mean, it took playing
(24:15):
constantly and I'm I'm still on over that. You know,
we play. We have a monthly game of Fourth Edition
that we play, and then we also have a monthly
Fifth Edition game that we play that gets recorded and
goes on YouTube. I can't tell you. I can't tell
you how like that. I get nervous every single time
we record because I made the mistake of reading the
(24:36):
comments one time, and they hate me, like, I mean,
like we've grown on them. My husband I play um
Goblin Juggalos, so we're goblos. So we are obnoxious. I
mean we are really intensely out of control. And the
(24:56):
first episode I made the mistake of reading some of
the comments, and but we're like we hate her. And
I was like, why do you hate me? We're both
being goblet We're both doing this, like why do you
hate me? And I was like, I'm never reading the
comments again. I'm just never gonna do it strongly against it. Yeah.
But but the other thing is, you know we had
(25:17):
played when you think I first started dating, we played
so many role playing games that we got to a
point where we started playing Shadow Run fifth Edition. I
don't know if you're familiar with Shadow Run at all.
It is complicated. It has a very complicated rule set,
and the fifth edition of it was no exception. It
was very complicated. And I literally sat down at the
(25:37):
table and said, hey, guys, I have learned so many
new RPGs in the last couple of months that I
am not even going to bother reading the book because
I don't want to learn another one, and you guys
all keep complaining about it, which makes me realize that
it's not an enjoyable thing to learn the rules for.
So I'm just going to tell you what I want
to do. You guys tell me how many dice to roll,
and I'm just going to role play and have a
(25:59):
good time. And you know, it was one of the
best times I've had role playing because I didn't put
so much thought into like, oh, well, how can I
min max my turn and how can I be the
best character possible. I was like, no, I don't want
to do that. I just want to play some asps
and have a good time. And it was fun and
(26:19):
and I feel like letting go of some of my
self consciousness has been really hard but has made it
easier to play. And I also I have the same
feeling that you do about playing new games with new people,
new board games with new people, because you feel like
I always have that panic of what if I don't
get it? Like what if I just what if I
(26:40):
just don't rock it? And you're really doing yourself a disservice,
Like you're very smart. You do all kinds of stuff
every single day. Like we like, we do stuff that's
way harder than learning a board game every day, and
we don't have the same kind of anxiety. And it's
because we have that fear of like, oh no, somebody
might think, like somebody might judge me, and I you know,
(27:01):
I have taken to when it's my turn the first time,
if I'm playing a new game, especially with new people,
my first turn, I'll be like, okay, so just to
be clear, these are my options. And then I'll state
the options that I have, and I'll be like, but
and then I can do this right. And then if
I really don't if there's something I really don't get,
I'll be like, but what's the point of me doing
(27:21):
this thing? So I like try to make them explain
it to me while repeating everything they say so that
I'll remember it. I don't know if that's helpful to
other people, but no, it sounds like a good strategy
to me. Yeah, it helps like grind it into my brain. Yeah.
And I've found that for certain games, the rules can
(27:42):
look so overwhelming and they might be, but once you
start playing it, it doesn't feel as overwhelming. Yeah, And
you had mentioned earlier about like the impront we talked
about like the improvisation for like prepping for D and
D and stuff like that. And I think that when
you write rules, part of the problem is that sometimes
(28:04):
you get sucked into a black hole of well, how
dumb is the player? And then you end up you
really end up over writing the rules because you're like,
do I have to tell them how to draw a card?
Do I have to tell them exactly where to discard it? Well,
somebody one time asked me this question, do I have
to address it in the rule book? And that ends
up bloating the rule book? But people just get really nervous,
(28:26):
you know, Yeah, absolutely, It's kind of to me it's
kind of a frustrating thing because tabletop gaming is what's
supposed to be very fun and for me has been,
but there was all of this stress around it, and
occasionally there still is. And it's like this fun activity
that has legit health benefits. I mean, on top of
(28:50):
like it helps you be more creative, it helps the
problem solving, it helps with all this stuff. It helps
distress people to think that people are being frightened away
or intimidated by this fun thing that can be can
mean so much. Makes me angry. Yeah, it's depressing. It's
(29:12):
it's the same thing with video games. And she had
what is her is her name Trudy and that who
wrote that article, Tanya Tanya. Sorry, she had mentioned that
that happens with female gamers who play, you know, online
video games, that they like try to like pretend that
(29:32):
they're a guy, or they just stopped playing it, or
they blame themselves for being harassed, and that's so sad. Oh. Absolutely,
I've told the story on this show before. I stopped
playing online games because it became it took something that
was fun and it became a very stressful, intimidating experience.
(29:53):
And this was like middle school. Yeah, yeah, um, are
there what other problems you see in this world of
tailtop gaming? And how do you think we could make
it better? Sure? One of the most interesting things about
that article was that she talked about the art on
(30:16):
the covers and how aliens and animals are more represented
than women on those covers, and I was like, shut up.
I was so mad about that. And I think you
know when when she wrote the part about one Deck Dungeon,
how one Deck Dungeon is like prominently female. How one
(30:36):
guy was like, when you come out with a male version,
let me know and I'll play it. Like that makes
me so mad. I think that. I think that. You know,
we talked about like, well, it needs to be more
diverse and need to be more inclusive. White men need
to be educated, like like white men need to understand
like and even you know, I talk about that my
(30:56):
groups are progressive and that's true. But you know, my
husband the other day said, well, I didn't really like
Disney movies when I was a kid because I wasn't
represented in them because he you know, he's not a princess.
And then we started watching Shira and he's like, well,
I don't really like this show because it's almost all women,
so why would I want to watch it? And it's
just like, I just I just don't know what to
(31:18):
say to that, because I'm like, okay, but welcome to
my whole life where almost every single thing I've consumed
has been you know, male, and it it didn't it
didn't bother me until the last couple of years because
when I was a kid, I was like well, I
just want to play. I just want to play video games.
I don't care that every single game I'm playing I'm
(31:40):
playing as a guy. I just want to play video games.
I love video games, you know. And you know I
don't mind that I'm not representing TV shows. And you know,
you and I had talked about, well, it's because of
internalized misogyny, you know. Not only do I not mind,
I kind of don't. I kind of don't like women.
I kind of don't like myself. I kind of don't
want to see myself up there, you know, right, And
(32:01):
you know it's it's only recently that I'm like, well, no,
that would be you know, that would be really cool
to see myself represented, and it would be really cool
to have that experience. And I think that white men
view it not as they They view it as something's
being taken away from them instead of, oh, well this
(32:24):
two percent has you know, women on the horse. I'm
not going to play because I I don't see myself there.
But yeah, can you for one second put yourself into
a woman's shoes and realize that all the games that
you love, like we we aren't reflected in those I
don't know and it's so funny because I'm like, the
most important thing is to cater to white men and
educate them. But like, you know, there's only so many
(32:45):
times that you can be like, well, you know, we
should make more covers. We don't al we should have
more women. It's like, but the white men are still
going to fight against it, and I just don't know
how to get to them. I don't know how to
I don't know how to be like, hey, I'm gonna
mail all of you a copy of them? Doesn't this
for everybody? By Bell Hooks? And can you please read it?
There we go right, like everybody has. We're all in
(33:07):
a book club. Now let's all read this. Yeah, get
a kickstarter going. Yeah. You judge on a lot of
stuff that I resonated with me. I was definitely one
of those I'm not like other girls people for a
long time and I look back and I cringe, um, same,
same yeah. And I have friends that still are And
(33:28):
it bothers me so much because it's almost like what
they're saying doesn't make sense with other things they're saying
about themselves personally because they are a woman, like, well
women aren't They're just generally not as good at the X.
But I am right, it doesn't. It doesn't track UM
(33:49):
And I totally agree that it's kind of this fear
of change, of things becoming more equal, and I I
personally only I think that we're just gonna have to
We're just gonna have to keep making more diverse games.
And sorry about it if it makes you nervous, Yeah,
they just they're just so threatened. And I'm just like,
(34:12):
but can you introspect and look at that feeling of
being friended and like explain it? Can you explain it?
And it's it's all tied into Trump being elected and
we could just talk about this garbage forever, but like
it's super hard to see it as a as a
general resurgence. It almost feels like in the world, you know,
(34:35):
but so like to still it down to just tabletop gaming,
it just feels like a microcosm of everything else that's
going on. You know. I totally agree, and that's we're
talking about tabletop gaming that we're talking about so much more. Um.
If we if we look kind of at some numbers
(34:58):
from that study that we've been mentioning in this it
was a very recent day. It came out in December
eighteen and it was called Analog Game Studies by Tanya Pabudha,
and it was a sweeping look at the top two
hundred games on Board Game Geek, which is correct me
if I'm wrong, but it's sort of like I am dB,
but for board games. Yes, yeah, absolutely, um and it
(35:21):
it found that generally a majority of board game designers
are white men, only two point four percent were white women,
and only a little of a four percent were non
white men. Of the two hundred games, only seven were
designed solely or jointly by women, and that number is
twelve for men of colors. So those are very stark numbers. Yeah,
(35:44):
it's crazy. Game designer Nicki Valens was the sole female
designer for the twenty second ranked game Mansions of Madness
Second Edition from S and Valence was a co designer
for the number forty seven game Eldritch Horror from Peggy
Chastinet was the code designer for the legacy game t
(36:05):
I M. E. Stories Time Stories from and Suzanne Goldberg
was a co designer for the Sherleck Holmes Consulting detective
The Thames Murders. In other cases and numbers sixty five
on the b g G Top two hundred, the one
seventy nine ranked Exit the Game, the Abandoned cabin from
(36:25):
and one ranked Village from eleven. We're both jointly designed
by Inca Brand and Flaminia Brazini was jointly responsible for
the design of the forty two ranked Lorenzo Il Magnifico
from So that's just not a lot of diversity women
(36:46):
represented in those the top two hundred games. Um. When
it comes to illustrators, the numbers are slightly better, but
only slightly. Around ten percent of illustrators of these top
two hundred games where white women and around seven percent
or women of color. So we've got a long ways
to go to make things more equal. Seriously. Yeah. Um,
(37:10):
So we have a little bit more for you, some
some advice for making these things more equal. But first
we have one more ad for our word from our
sponsor m H and we're back, Thank you, sponsor. So,
(37:32):
one thing that I wanted to ask you about, Nicole was, um,
what what about you? What do you have any projects
on the horizon that you are excited about? Yes? So, uh,
Anthony and I are working on a game that is
tentatively at the moment entitled Dance Hall mash Up. It's
a game about dancing. It's not about dancing, well, it's
(37:54):
about dancing quickly. UM. We a friend of our, Jason Tagmier,
has UM. He has a Patreon for his board game development.
He basically puts out UM wallet games. They're like small
games that are eighteen cards. They come in a little wallet.
They're all like uniformly the same size. But he was
also doing something on his Patreon where he was doing
postcard games. So the first year it was Cult Films
(38:18):
and you had to have the rules on the postcard
and then you would play. The components would be things
that you could easily find in the house. And then
the next year it was One Hit Wonders, So we
did one for Spinny right around m HM, and the
one Hit Wonders year was play everything with the postcard.
So each corner of the postcard was a different dance
(38:38):
move from the Spinny right around video, and one person
would basically spin the postcard onto the table and then
whichever corner was facing them, they would yell out that
dance move, and everybody did the dance moves as fast
as possible and then slap the postcard and the last
person slap would be out. It was it was a
game that was for like a bunch of people, and
then we were like, you know what, we could make
this but with lots of dance moves. So yeah, we
(39:02):
spent an entire weekend just watching YouTube videos about how
to describe how to do dances and then made a
ton of cards and we pitched it to some publishers
in November, and we have two publishers who are really
seriously interested in it, so I'm hoping that is the
next game that we have come out. We've actually, uh
so my husband was diagnosed with cancer last year, so
(39:24):
we've had like we had kind of a year where
we didn't do anything, and I think we're both feeling
the pressure of, you know, we have to get back
into it. We have to get games out because we
published Resistor and then the next year we published two games.
So we were like, oh, next year we'll published three games,
and then life was like like I'm sorry to hear that,
(39:45):
so thank you. So yeah, so we're just like we
have a ton of prototypes that you know, we've been
shopping around and this is where it comes into play
about pitching the publishers. When we went to pack some
plugged in December. You know, we had five games, we
have five prototypes that we were just pitching to any
publisher we can get an empoyment with. We were just like, hey,
(40:05):
we sit down with you cool five games, and we
had the pitch down to like ten minutes. We really
here you go two minutes a game. So we we
have some some pretty promising leads there. Oh that sounds
so fun. Thank you. I'm a big I love any
kind of game that gets you up and moving, and
I love dancing, and I'm terrible at it, so this
(40:26):
sounds perfect for me. Yeah, I also love all those
things that I'm also terrible at dancing, so I totally
get it. Well, keep me posted about that. Oh absolutely So.
For for anyone who's listening, any any woman who's interested
in getting involved in in the world of designing a
(40:46):
tabletop game, UM, do you have any advice or tips
for them? Yeah? Um, for there's so many layers to this. Um.
If you, I mean, if you've already got a game
and you want to try to you know, get it played,
get get your prototype tested. Um, there's something called Unpubed,
the Unpublished Game Network. It's unpubed dot net. UM. If
(41:08):
you go there and you make an account and you
put your games into there, you can kind of keep checked.
They have events all over the world, so they have
these things called unpubbed minis, and basically you go to
a local board game store and if you're you registered
for it, you go to a local board game store
and then you just show your prototype and and you know,
people come play your prototype, give your feedback. They have
feedback forms you can even print out. UM. There's also
(41:31):
if you're on the East coast, there's an event called Metatopia,
which is in North Jersey, and that is literally just
four days of play testing prototypes and it's very heavily scheduled.
If you you know, say you're like, okay, I want
to have five play tests of my game, you can
actually request one play test to just be designers, so
then you can get really good feedback because it's only
(41:52):
designers playing your game. There are also, you know, there's
there's all kinds of playtesting communities. We have one in
Philadelphia that is based on a community in Boston. It's
called the Gamemaker's Guild. And there we're basically we're basically
their first franchise is what I like to joke. So,
so we have Gamemaker's Guild Philadelphia, there's one in Connecticut. Um,
(42:14):
there's also, uh, if you're in you know, the Northwest,
there's play Tests Northwest, which I think is in Seattle. Um,
Emma Larkins runs the play test group in Seattle. Also,
um gosh, there's just so there's also like proto Speel,
which is another thing that's sort of like unpubed. And
then there's you know events like Packs the Penny or
(42:35):
kid Expo. There's there's one that's dedicated solely to board games,
and Unpubed usually gets a booth at these events, so
you can register for unpubbed at these events, which is
really cool. Um. There's also gen Con and um, I
think d g G Con. They have this really intense
(42:56):
thing that's called publisher speed dating, which is yeah, it's
as horrifying as it sounds. Um, you have like five
to ten minutes to pitch your game to a publisher
and then the publishers just switched tables. So, um, it's
really good practice to get your pitch down to you know,
ten minutes UM. On a on a more granular level,
(43:16):
if you're looking for ways to actually physically make your prototype. UM,
there's a site called the Game Crafter and they have
basically everything you could ever need to make a game,
so you can actually, you know, upload all your art,
order all the pieces, and then order one single copy
of your game. It won't be cheap, but it'll give
(43:39):
you a really nice looking, professional looking prototype that you
can then bring to events like this UM and like, honestly,
if you're a person listening and you're like, oh my god,
I live in the middle of nowhere, or oh my god,
I'm way too much of an introvert to try to
get into this stuff without knowing someone, I tell people
all the time whenever I'm on panels, like please please
(44:01):
email me, please reach out to me. I'm happy to
like find you someone connect you with someone you know.
I don't. I don't do like mentorships or anything, but
I feel like basically what I'm doing is kind of
like a mentorship is just not officially called that. UM.
There's also a group called board Game Broads on Facebook,
(44:23):
so if you they are actually trying to run a
specific mentorship program. So if people really want to, you know,
have something that is more targeted towards specific help that
they need. That's a great place to start. Those are
all great resources. Thank you. Are there any um developers
(44:50):
that are games that you're excited for coming out in
the future. I made a list of lots of women
in board games, but I don't know of anything that's
ming out soon. Suzanne Sinsley, who is half of Cardboard Edison,
She's got a game called Ceylon c E y l
O N that I think premiered at Essen, which is
(45:12):
a big, huge board game event in Germany. And I
don't think that one's available state side because my husband
keeps asking me when we can order it. So that's
that's one game that we're definitely really really really eager
to get our hands on. Other than salein I don't
have any specific board games that I'm like super hyped
to get my hands on. Well you mentioned the list, Yeah,
(45:35):
I do so. Um. Heather O'Neill and Heather Wilson are
they're part of Ninth Level Games. Um they have. Ninth
Level Games is probably most famous for Cobal Date My Baby,
which is a role playing game, but the two Heathers
made a game called Schrodinger's Cats, which is like one
of my favorite party games of all time. And they're
(45:58):
Heather and Neils working on Pavlov's Dogs, as you can imagine,
which is going to be another game that they're coming
out with. They also just came out with a game
called Maple Party, which is a super fun like little
party game, co op party game. Bonnie Newbauer is another
really amazing game designer. She's local to Philadelphia. I don't
know if she has anything published yet, but I would
definitely keep an eye out for her because her we've
(46:20):
played so many of her prototypes that are really excellent.
Mary Martha for Dan, she made a game called The
Ultimate clap Back, which is also a lot of fun.
That one was on Kickstarter. UM. Carol Mertz is another
great one. She She made a game called Pass the Book,
which is a game about corporate responsibility, which I pull
it out sometimes at parties and my friends are like, Nope,
I'm not at work. You can't make me play that.
(46:43):
I won't play a game about about asking people about
their emails. Um. There's another great game called Someone Has Died,
which is made by a d Slippeck and Liz Roach.
Um Banana Chan makes RPGs and LARPs. She is absolutely incredible. UM.
And then for artists, Uh, my friend Bridget in Delicado.
(47:04):
She was co designer of a game called The Plot Thickens,
which one one of the Hasbro. Hasbro did a bunch
of game design contests for a few years and um,
The Plot Thickens won one of those game contests. She
does graphic design for a e G and Whiz Kids.
So she did art for Dungeon Hustle. UM. I can't
remember any of the other games that she's done art
(47:26):
for now I feel terrible. UM. And Heather winter Vaughne
did art for a game called Beneath Nexus and also
for the game Kids on Bikes, which is an RPG.
That's that's pretty famous. Um. There's also um Sherry Spirou
who she's the owner of ad Magic and Breaking Games.
Ad Magic is one of the biggest board game printers
(47:48):
in the world and Breaking Games is her publishing arm.
So she is a badass lady. She's really amazing. There's
also I have two friends who are a Kickstarter train,
Garrettano and Anya Combs, who are both just beautiful, wonderful people. Oh,
and I also had another name on here UM that's
Sobel who does illustrations for so so, so so many
(48:13):
board games that are out there right now, so many
of the any board games. And her artwork is just beautiful.
She did herbaceous and I forget what else. So everything
I just said it sounds like Bolks. I'm like, oh,
her work is great. And then I'm like, here's a
single game. I believe you. I believe you, I think
you check out. Yeah, that's one point I would love
(48:34):
for these episodes, the one that focused on playing and
now this one in development. Um. At one point I
would love for listeners to take away who maybe haven't
had much experience in this world is there's so much
out there. There's so much variety. And I have a
group of friends that used to tell me that they
hated playing tabletop games and they hated a specific type,
(49:00):
and I've been able to introduce them. They really didn't
like um competitive games, but I've found co op games
that they love, and now we play board games almost
every time we hang out. So there is a lot
out there. If you don't have if you haven't had
good experiences, but you've only had a little bit and
maybe we've convinced you that you might want to give
(49:22):
it another tribe. There's just so many options. There are
also like beautiful games that they're not necessarily cooperative, and
they're they're not competitive, but they're not cooperative. Like uh
m Al Larkins, who I mentioned earlier, runs a places
commedia in Seattle. She made a game I think it's
called and Then We Died and it's a very artistic
game about like communing with ghosts basically, and you're like
(49:45):
like putting these cards down and putting words together, and
you're all building a story together, and that's what the
plot Pickens is. Also the plot Pickens is you're all
using keywords and you're each individually making a story, but
it all works together, and you get bonus points for
like paying attention to what other people are saying in
their story and then adding their pieces to your own story.
So it's like, you know, more narrative driven games. And
(50:08):
there's also games like you know, Fog of Love and
and Then We Held Hands, which are emotional experiences. So
I feel like there's a lot more out there than
just Risk and Twilight Struggle. Yeah, and this very same
group of friends that didn't like competitive games. One of
their favorite games is Dixit, which is competitive, but it's
(50:28):
kind of like a key competitive. It's a relax competitive
and it's beautiful. I got my coworkers addicted to telestrations.
Oh yeah, yeah, that's a good one. It's hilarious. Yeah. Um.
I like to end episodes like this with a very
simple question, how do you think we could make the
(50:50):
tabletop gaming world more inclusive, either on the playing side
or development side. I think that, um, you know, it's
for for the development side. The advice that I give
to everyone is if you have an idea, just make it.
And it's really I know, it's really hard to get
over that fear, and it's really hard to put yourself
(51:11):
out there. You know. I I have a lot of
fear putting myself out there as a game designer and
as a writer. And what the The thing about the
community of developers is that there are a lot of
awesome people and a lot of people pay it forward
because they wouldn't be here without the help of others.
Like when we got started, you know, I mentioned Jason
(51:32):
Tagmire who does wallet games, and he said, oh, talk
to my friend Christopher Bedell when you go to packs
and he didn't tell us, you know, talk to my
friend who's the president of the company that made senseil
as the multiverse. He just said, talked to my friend
and Christopher Bdell and then we met him and we
were like, oh, my god, you're super important. This is intimidating.
And he was so nice to us. He was like, oh,
(51:52):
only have five minutes, talked to us for twenty minutes,
gave us a bunch of advice, like and and now
we're now we're like friends, you know. And so many
people were so generous with their time that that's how
I treat people like That's why I run the Gamemaker's Guild.
That's why I you know, try to do as much
as I can. That's why I tell people like, you know,
please reach out, because I think that that's what people
(52:15):
need to put themselves out there creatively. And I think
that goes the same for playing games, because a lot
of people have that fear, like you said, of playing
competitive games, and also they have a fear of of
looking stupid. And I think that if people were a
little gentler with how they handle people, it would be
(52:35):
it would be more welcoming. I mean for us, it's
it's been pretty welcoming, and we've definitely hit some roadbumps.
But I think that it was people's kindness that that helps.
Oh God, here I go again. I'm like, if everybody
would just be more kind Like, Um, it's funny that
you say that, because I am an extremely competitive person
(52:56):
and I for this. So I have like three groups
friends I play games with, and for this group of
friends that didn't like competitive games, I had to learn
to chill out a bit when I play with them,
and they have to dial it back and that's hard. Yeah,
And it was hard at first, and I still sometimes
(53:18):
find myself getting angry because I just it's really funny.
But I'm like, you guys are not being the right
kind of competitive. But that's my own thing. It's supposed
to be fun for everyone playing, and it is. I
have a good time with him. I just that was
something I had to like look at myself and say, well,
if I want to enjoy this activity with friends of mine,
(53:40):
then I need to modify my behavior a little bit. Um.
So yeah, I would say it's worth looking at your
own playing habits, At least in my case, I would.
I would argue, you know, if you have a group
of friends that won't play games with you, why is
that right? I think A good think, A good litmus
(54:01):
test for competitiveness is Bonanza. Have you played Bonanza? No?
I haven't. Bonanza is one of the best. Like, we
love Bonanza and we hate the art. We love it
so much and hate the art so much that Anthony
one year, for an anniversary gift, made me a copy
of the game on Gamecraft with cat illustrations. He replaced
(54:24):
all of the beans in this bean farming game with
adorable cats. He got like the ratio right, He did
everything and just printed so that we would play it more.
But Bonanza is really cutthroat, and it's like it's really
about like screwing other people over and like you can
kind of like make alliances, but like you don't have
(54:46):
to honor them at all. And like if you play
with a group of people who are all super nice
to each other and they're like giving each other cards
and being really kind to each other, like Anthony can't
stand it. Anthony's like, y'all are playing this game wrong.
So it's funny. And sometimes I'll play with people who
are who are like really friendly to each other. And
those are the kind of people that you don't want
to play competitive games or you want to play like
(55:07):
a cooperative game with. But then I'll play it with
Anthony and his friends and they'll be like, you know,
I would stab you for a cocoa bean right now,
and I'm like, cool, that's we have a really good friendship.
I love this. So it is like it's it's reading
the room, it's reading the people that you're with, and
it's and and like you said before, there's just so
there's such a there's so much rich diversity in mechanics
(55:32):
now that you don't need to play a game that's
gonna end friendships. Yes, yes, I would advise against it.
And I do think that that that's a great point
reading the room and also just the number one one
of the rules of the Internet. It's don't be a jerk,
like I'm competitive, but I'm nice about it, or at
(55:52):
least like there are certain people that are competitive and
so mean that I won't play with them, right, And
those are like the sexist misogynists that I was afraid
existed in this like D and D world that I
didn't go to UM that's one thing. That's that's nobody's
having fun except them, and maybe they're like specific group
of friends. But um, I do think that there is
(56:14):
a vast array of game types and mechanics, like you
were saying, so that you can find a game for
you and your group, your specific group you're playing with. Yeah,
my husband will tell you that I'm salty when I lose,
and that's that's true. There there are definitely times when
I'm like, I'm gonna flip this table. Oh we have
(56:39):
Like there was one session of dn D that will
not we won't speak about it. It's great, I love it,
oh man. In our five game that was like recorded
on YouTube, like our Chaos Sorcerer, like that the bar
on fire and almost killed me and I was like, yo, Ryan,
real life, I will actually kill you in real life
(57:00):
and view that again, like don't do that again. And
like Anthony was like, you do not want to read
the comments on that episode because people got real mad
at you. And I was like he almost killed me. Yeah,
but come on, but yeah, I got I got, I
get extra salty. We don't talk about that one. It's funny.
How how invested in really good? Yes? Well, thank you
(57:22):
so much for joining us. This has been so lovely. Yeah,
thank you so much for having me. This is great.
Where can people find you? So? Um on Twitter? Um,
I'm CB four on Instagram, It's the whole thing. It's
Cardboard Fortress Games at Instagram. And seriously, I I really
(57:42):
meant it about people if they wanted to reach out,
I'm my email addresses Cardboard Fortress Games at gmail dot com.
If you want to talk about you know, how to
go to events, how to you know? Even things like help,
how do I do a kickstarter? How do I get
in touch with you know the press? How do I
know do this? If I don't know the answer to
(58:02):
your question, there's a really good chance that I know
a person who has the answer to your question. Yeah.
That is so valuable. So anyone listening that's interested, I
would take Nicole up on that. And in the meantime,
if if any of you listening are working on games yourself,
(58:23):
we would love to hear about it. You can email
us at mom Stuff at how stuff works dot com,
and you can find us on Twitter at mom Stuff
podcast and on Instagram at stuff I've Never told you.
Thanks as always to our producer Andrew Howard and thanks
to you for listening.
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