December 17, 2025 • 40 mins
#GeniusGames #STEMEducation #SciComm #JohnCoveyou #BoardGames #Science
We've done several episodes on games from Genius Games (Cytosis, Periodic, Genotype), and now we get to speak to the man behind it all: John Coveyou, founder and CEO of Genius Games. John graciously sat down with us to talk about the beginning of Genius Games, the stigma of "educational" games, the challenges and joys of STEM game design, and some of his favorite non-Genius games to play. So sit back and enjoy this conversation with the man who makes our job easy, John Coveyou.
Timestamps- 00:00 Introductions
- 01:55 History of John and Genius Games
- 07:50 Designing Educational Games
- 13:19 Balancing Fun and Realism
- 20:54 Most Challenging Games to Design
- 29:55 Upcoming Offerings
- 36:36 Favorite (Non-Genius) Games
- 38:23 Wrap-Up
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This episode of Gaming with Science™ was produced with the help of the University of Georgia and is distributed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license.
Splash images courtesy of Genius Games.
Full Transcript(Some platforms truncate the transcript due to length restrictions. If so, you can always find the full transcript on https://www.gamingwithscience.net/ )
Jason 0:00 Hello and welcome to the gaming with science podcast where we talk about the science behind some of your favorite games.
Jason 0:07 Today we're talking with John Coveyou, CEO and founder of genius games.
Brian 0:16 Hey everybody. Welcome to a creator interview. I'm Brian.
Jason 0:19 This is Jason,
Brian 0:20 and joining us is John Coveyou from genius games, John, can you introduce yourself?
John 0:26 Sure, yeah, I'm the owner of genius games. I've owned it since about 2011 and we make science accurate board games and jigsaw puzzles for the hobby market.
Brian 0:38 Those are very cool and very popular. I think I like the the frog. One in particular is very good.
John 0:44 You dissect a frog in a lot of public school science classes, so we want to make sure we threw that one in there.
Brian 0:49 I don't think I did a frog. Did you ever do a frog?
John 0:52 I did. I think it was 10th grade biology.
Jason 0:55 I don't remember if I ever dissected a frog. I did do a fetal pig.
Brian 0:59 I remember we did a heart one time and that actually, like, screwed me up for a long time.
John 1:03 Yeah, I don't want to know what this stuff looks like inside of my body. Let me just move on.
Brian 1:10 Fair enough. We're really excited to be able to get you on to talk to us today. Our whole reason for existence is to talk about board games and science and genius games. As you can imagine, we have done many of your games before. We've done cytosis and periodic. We did genotype. We have more games planned in the future. We're going to be doing cellulose and probably whatever else comes down the pipe. Eventually. I'm sure we'll, we'll touch on most, if not all, of the games in the genius library.
John 1:37 Well, that's great, because those are two of my favorite things, science and board gaming and both have, I mean, honestly, had a dramatic impact on my life in many ways. I mean, I run a company that combines those two, but the impact goes much deeper than that. So I'm very excited to talk about both of those things and how they came together. Could you
Jason 1:55 give us a bit of your background there? Because this is not necessarily a logical place to end up. At the intersection of science and board game. Your company basically lives in the space of making what I call hard science games, games where they're not just inspired by science, but they try to portray it accurately and faithfully. What brought you to that place?
John 2:13 Yeah, and you know, it's a long, windy story, but I will try and summarize it as quick as possible. I think when you see a lot of games out there in the marketplace and you see, you know, a science-based game or a STEM-based game, what you're looking at is a product someone wanted to create, to just generate money. I did not arrive at the place of creating a product. I arrived. I mean, I fell in love with the sciences, and also loved board gaming, and those two things kind of randomly came together. So a little bit about my background in the sciences. After high school, I joined the military. I was in the military for eight years total, but only three of it was on active duty. I spent about a year and a half in Iraq in Mosul and Samara. And while I was there, I was enrolled in some university classes, and one was a chemistry class
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Jason (00:00):
Hello and welcome to the gaming with science podcast
(00:03):
where we talk about the sciencebehind some of your favorite
Today we're talking with JohnCoveyou, CEO and founder of
games.
genius games.
Brian (00:16):
Hey everybody. Welcome to a creator interview. I'm Brian.
Jason (00:19):
This is Jason,
Brian (00:20):
and joining us is John Coveyou from genius games, John,
can you introduce yourself?
John (00:26):
Sure, yeah, I'm the owner of genius games. I've owned it
since about 2011 and we makescience accurate board games and
jigsaw puzzles for the hobbymarket.
Brian (00:38):
Those are very cool and very popular. I think I like the
the frog. One in particular isvery good.
John (00:44):
You dissect a frog in a lot of public school science
classes, so we want to make surewe threw that one in there.
Brian (00:49):
I don't think I did a frog. Did you ever do a frog?
John (00:52):
I did. I think it was 10th grade biology.
Jason (00:55):
I don't remember if I ever dissected a frog. I did do
a fetal pig.
Brian (00:59):
I remember we did a heart one time and that actually,
like, screwed me up for a longtime.
John (01:03):
Yeah, I don't want to know what this stuff looks like
inside of my body. Let me justmove on.
Brian (01:10):
Fair enough. We're really excited to be able to get you on
to talk to us today. Our wholereason for existence is to talk
about board games and scienceand genius games. As you can
imagine, we have done many ofyour games before. We've done
cytosis and periodic. We didgenotype. We have more games
planned in the future. We'regoing to be doing cellulose and
probably whatever else comesdown the pipe. Eventually. I'm
(01:33):
sure we'll, we'll touch on most,if not all, of the games in the
genius library.
John (01:37):
Well, that's great, because those are two of my
favorite things, science andboard gaming and both have, I
mean, honestly, had a dramaticimpact on my life in many ways.
I mean, I run a company thatcombines those two, but the
impact goes much deeper thanthat. So I'm very excited to
talk about both of those thingsand how they came together.
Could you
Jason (01:55):
give us a bit of your background there? Because this
is not necessarily a logicalplace to end up. At the
intersection of science andboard game. Your company
basically lives in the space ofmaking what I call hard science
games, games where they're notjust inspired by science, but
they try to portray itaccurately and faithfully. What
brought you to that place?
John (02:13):
Yeah, and you know, it's a long, windy story, but I will
try and summarize it as quick aspossible. I think when you see a
lot of games out there in themarketplace and you see, you
know, a science-based game or aSTEM-based game, what you're
looking at is a product someonewanted to create, to just
generate money. I did not arriveat the place of creating a
(02:34):
product. I arrived. I mean, Ifell in love with the sciences,
and also loved board gaming, andthose two things kind of
randomly came together. So alittle bit about my background
in the sciences. After highschool, I joined the military. I
was in the military for eightyears total, but only three of
it was on active duty. I spentabout a year and a half in Iraq
(02:55):
in Mosul and Samara. And while Iwas there, I was enrolled in
some university classes, and onewas a chemistry class. And
reading through I had, I got alot of time to read through that
chemistry textbook, and someother textbooks I had chemistry
and some in physics, I think Iwas taking at the same time,
because of the the stressfulenvironment that I was in
(03:16):
studying sciences actuallybecame very therapeutic for me,
like allowed me to take my mindoff of the stress, the anxiety,
the difficulty that we werefacing as soldiers in that area,
and I got to think about like,how atoms were built and how the
universe was made, and how atomscombined to form compounds and
(03:37):
molecules And and it actually,it was really nice to, like,
take my mind off of everything.And so I really fell in love
with the sciences in a way,while I was there. And at the
same time, we were playing lotsand lots of games, a lot of
poker, a lot of risk, not, notstuff you would think of when
you think about traditional, youknow, hobby games. When you
(04:00):
think about traditional hobbygames, you know, a lot of times
you're thinking about likeCarcassonne and dominion and
Settlers of Catan, which wasprobably the three most popular,
or a ticket to ride. You'rethinking about these really
popular hobby games you can likebuying target. For me, like
poker, Texas Hold'em was a bigintroduction to getting my mind
wrapped around the humanexperience, around games, and
(04:20):
then we play a lot of risk, andboy, you know, playing risk in a
combat zone with a bunch ofangry soldiers, so many risk
tables flipped.
Brian (04:29):
I feel like risk kind of sits at that, at that space
where I know it's not, it's notquite part of what we would
consider a modern hobby game,except I'm thinking about risk
legacy and how it's kind of beeninducted and almost like
transitions between the gamesthat most people would have at
home and sort of the hobby gamespace.
John (04:46):
Yeah, it was that, yeah, I think Rob Daviau was the guy who
did that, and he's an excellentlegacy designer. And yeah, that
did bring risk into a differentplace in the board gaming space.
But anyway, so I came home. Fromthe military, and I was studying
engineering, so I got my degree,and have a master's degree in
engineering. Went on to work asan engineer for a while. At the
(05:08):
same time, really started toplay a lot of other hobby games
with some of my family andfriends. Got into Dominion
pretty heavy. Started playingsome of the older stuff, like
through the ages and mage night,some of these bigger like, whoa,
you can, I mean, you can playthese things for hours and hours
and hours and real and really,like, never hit the bottom. You
(05:29):
know, there's still, like, moregame to be played. And I was
teaching chemistry. I wasteaching chemistry at the
community college, and it justkind of struck me, like, Why?
Why are we so intimidated by allthese science concepts. You
know, if I was to tell you thatyou have three oranges and three
apples and each of them weighone pound, you could do the
math. It's real simple. But assoon as you remove these objects
(05:53):
that we're really familiar withand you replace them with
neutrons and protons, all of asudden we lose our minds, and
we're just like, I can't do it.It's too hard. It's not that
hard. These are we're justintimidated, I think, by a lot
of these concepts. So So I wasthinking through that, and at
the same time playing games withsome of my friends, and they're
like, memorizing just uselessinformation that they'll never
(06:15):
use in real life science fictiongames. And I'm thinking, like,
why is this the case? And itstruck me that I just, I wish
there was more real sciencebased, like real science based
board games, card gamessomething so that when you're
playing it, you're playingsomething that accurately mimics
a real science concept, realprocess. And I think cyt-, you
(06:38):
know, jumping forward, I thinkcytosis, in a lot of ways, is
one that I'm the most proud of,in that sense, because it,
because it's just such aninteresting concept, the human
cell, that game was reallydesigned around the
infrastructure that governs theactivity within a human cell. So
that's how it happened. That'sthat's the backstory.
Brian (06:56):
What is the mission statement of genius games?
John (06:59):
Yeah, that's a great question. We have toyed around
with a few different missionstatements. We say our core
purpose is to create sciencebased products that engage just
allow people to have fun withthe science concept. The wording
isn't too tight on it. You know,I think sometimes you see
(07:20):
mission statements, and you'relike, what does that even mean?
Brian (07:23):
You got to create synergy.
John (07:25):
Yeah, Team synergy. And, like, Listen, if I'm in a team
and it's not synergetic, I'mleaving. So I don't know what
Brian (07:32):
something that we've been dealing with, because, again,
this means,
we're in this space, and wehave, you know, read designer
diaries and interviews and whatpeople have said when they're
trying to design games that arelike this, where they're trying
to use science concepts or havesort of an educational undertone
to what they're doing. We did anepisode on daybreak, which is
(07:52):
all about climate change,designed by Matt Leacock and
Matteo Menapace, and they werevery explicit in the designer
diary, they didn't want an"educational game", quote,
unquote, very specifically, andthat bothered me that this idea
that educational is a dirty wordin the games industry, or they
said chocolate dipped broccoli.I'm just curious, what are your
(08:14):
thoughts on that, and how do youkind of deal with that sort of
intrinsic bias that aeducational game can't be a fun
game?
John (08:20):
Yeah, that that is such a tough place for us. It is true.
The word education in the gamingspace is kind of a dirty word.
And I think the reason whythere, there were so many
companies or people trying tocreate products that were really
just to generate revenue to makemoney, and so you saw a lot of
(08:41):
these larger companies do that,and you have things like
flashcards that are referred toas games, and they're not game,
they're not they're not games,they're just activities. And
then a lot of people tried tomake something they could sell
that maybe accurately depictedsome science concept, but it
really wasn't fun. Wasn't fun atall. So the passion that went
(09:01):
into, or maybe the motivation, Iwould say, that went into
creating that product was justbased upon making money, not on
making something for the hobby.I love making things for the
hobby. I love making games. Ilove thinking about games and
why people have fun or arefrustrated in the middle of a
(09:22):
decision, what makes a decisionin the game really interesting?
That's a question that is reallyhard to answer and really easy
to answer at the same time, it'sreally easy to answer that, but
you could talk about it forhours and hours, days, weeks,
years, right? What makes it whatmakes a decision in a game
really interesting to make, andif you're not able to sit and
(09:43):
think about that and really godeep into what makes it a
decision in a game interesting,then you're probably not going
to have a game that offersinteresting decisions or is not
very fun, or is not veryenjoyable. And then, like they
mentioned, chocolate coveredbroccoli, you just have.
Broccoli, and you basically gotto make people eat it. Somehow,
(10:04):
you slap the word game on it,even though it's not a fun game
or a good game, right? What? Andyou know, when we market our
games. So I would not considerour company an educational game
design company. We're not likean educational game publisher,
although, if someone was to say,well, you make games that are
like educational, right? I wouldsay you can use them for
(10:27):
educational purposes. We have alot of teachers, tons and tons
of teachers that take our gamesand they use them in the
classroom. And that's fantastic,and that really brings me joy.
But we don't actually designgames so that a teacher can pick
it up and play it and use it intheir classroom. What we design
a game for, we take a scienceconcept that you would find, and
(10:49):
let's say a biology or achemistry or a physics 101,
class, so a standard conceptyou'd find in an entry-level
science class, and we want totake that concept and we want to
make a game about that concept,that even if you remove the
science and put zombies ordragons or ninjas or you name
it, the game itself would wouldstand all on its own. People
(11:11):
would find the game fun. They'dfind the game worth their time.
They'd pay to play that game.They'd choose to play that game
over any other game. It just sohappens that when a scientist
looks at that game, they go,"Wow, this science is really
accurate". Now, if you want tocall that an educational game,
you know, be my guest. Call itwhatever you'd like. It's really
(11:32):
hard to use terms. You know, weuse terms like educational or we
use the English vocabulary isused to make sense of things
that we don't understand. So theword educational is a very fast
word to understand something. Ihave a hard time calling our
games educational around hobbygame players, because they have,
they have an idea about what aneducation educational game is,
(11:55):
and that is a game that is meantto force you to eat your
broccoli by covering it inchocolate. Yeah? And that's not
what we do. We want you to eatit because you're like, This is
good. This is fun.
Brian (12:06):
It's really good. Broccoli.
John (12:07):
It's really, yeah, it was prepared by a chef.
Brian (12:14):
language for this is difficult, we say, I say, a hard
science game, yeah? Which Ithink, or, like you said, a
realistic science game is thatkind of how you think about
this?
John (12:23):
I'm not too married to any specific language. We do
normally say our games are realscience themed games, or hard
science themed games, gamesdesigned around a science
concept. It's tough, becausethere's not really any clear
language to use when someone'slike, oh. Because anything I
say, they say, Oh. So you makeeducational games. I mean, we
(12:44):
design our games for hobbygamers, right? You'll, you'll
see any of our games that youplay, you'll see the exact same
mechanisms out there in thehobby and other games. Oh, yeah.
Like Cytosis, worker placementgame, yeah. I mean, there's,
there's probably 100 differentworker placement games out
there, the ecosystem line, allcard drafting. Um, Ion a
compound building game that'sendorsed by the National Science
(13:07):
Teachers Association. There'snothing different about the
basic mechanisms in that game,as there is from Sushi Go or
seven wonders.
Brian (13:14):
It's card draft. Oh, so it's card drafting, set man, set
creation game.
John (13:18):
That's right.
Jason (13:19):
So I've got a question for you on this design is that,
as you're making a hard sciencegame, you've kind of got the two
goals there. You want to be afun game, and that is definitely
a top priority, obviously, fromwhat you said, but you also want
to be beholden to the realscience. And so my question is,
what do you do? How do youmanage when those come into
(13:40):
conflict when, when do youdecide to make a simplification
for the sake of fun gameplay,when do you decide to to make
the mechanics morph to match thematch the reality? How do you
make those decisions?
Brian (13:52):
And we have a specific example as well, and like and
again, we we play games in thehobby. So we know that the
mutations in genotype are a gamething, because if you had it
realistic, it would neverhappen, and it wouldn't come up,
and it would actually break thegame if it happened the way that
it needed to.
It's
that.just
John (14:09):
Okay, so let me I'll address this in two ways. The
first is, I'll tell you whattraditionally happens, and then
I'll tell you how we designgames. We get pitches all the
time from designers, and theysay, Hey, I got a really great
game, you know, you have thismechanism and that mechanism,
(14:31):
and it's themed around whateverbiology, cell biology or plant
biology. One of the firstquestions I ask is it "could,
could you just completely takethis theme off and replace it
with anything else?" Right? Now,was this really a game designed
around something else and youjust slapped this biology design
(14:53):
on top of it. Usually the answeris yes, the game is just themed
cell. So you just keep doing that, right? You turn this
around. You could just slap anyold theme on it. You can kind of
model you have into actualresources. You limit them with
tell when you play a game likethat that this theme is not
game mechanisms, traditionalgame mechanisms, and then you
really embedded in the in thedesign. When we make a game, we
start with a concept, a scienceconcept, and the first thing
just play test it, play test it,that's a it's really
(15:16):
that I do personally. Me as Imap that whole science concept
out, I map out the primaryresources involved in that game.
So let's talk about psychosis asan example. Because I think that
that's cell biology is probablythe most like ubiquitous concept
you you don't get to you don'tget through high school biology
(15:40):
without learning up the humancell at least once, right? Oh,
something that you that geniusgames does, that nobody else in
mitochondria, the powerhouse ofthe cell. Every time I talk
the space really makes as muchof a point of doing. And one of
about this, someone says that,so we'll just get that out of
the way. So cell biology, okay,What? What? What are the basic
resources of a human cell? Well,you have nucleic acids,
(16:02):
carbohydrates, you haveproteins, and you have lipids,
the things that really make meappreciate the way that you
fats, and I might be missingsomething else in there, because
I feel like it's, oh, yeah,energy ATP. These, if you take a
biology class, you're going tohear about these four or five
resources over and over and overagain. I mean, you read them on
(16:24):
the package food food labels,right? How many, how many
carbohydrates does this have?How much protein does it have,
how much fat does it have? Thereason why those three things
show up, it doesn't tell you howmany nucleic acids it has, but
the reason why those threeresources show up is because
(16:46):
they're literally the buildingblocks of the human body.
They're the building blocks of ahuman cell. And when we built,
when I first designed that game,I stopped and I said, you know,
what are the basic buildingblocks inside the human body?
Well, it's the mainmacromolecules, and here they
(17:08):
are. Okay. Now, how does a humancell now? How is a human cell
built? Well, a human cell has aGolgi apparatus. It has
endoplasmic reticulum, it has anucleus, it has a plasma
membrane. So like so, how do allthese things work? And we
basically mapped all that out.Here's how DNA replicates.
(17:30):
Here's how DNA turns into RNA.Here's how RNA turns into
proteins. Here's how theproteins interact with other
lipids to decorate them, to turnthem into useful molecules and
hormones and other things. Andhere's each organelle involved
in that process. We just mappedit all out. There's no game
(17:51):
there's no game here. There'szero game here. It's basically a
model that shows how resourcesmove through the different
factories within a human cell,and then we say, Okay, what is
the motivation of the humancell? What is it trying to
achieve? Well, the human cell istrying to thrive on its own.
(18:14):
Produce resources to communicatethroughout the body. Produce
resources for the body to use.Okay, how could a player take on
the same motivation as a celland then be awarded points for
those things. And how could wecreate or put some mechanisms in
place to limit the amount ofresources in certain ways so
(18:36):
that a player has to make aninteresting decision to gain
their path towards whateverthey're motivated towards
scoring points, whatever it is,and then that's where basic game
mechanisms come into play.Worker placement was perfect.
You place a worker that takesthe spot up. You place a you
(18:58):
place a worker inside of thenucleus, and you get RNA. You
place a worker the mitochondria.Well, there you can take some
ATP, or you can convert yourcarbohydrates into ATP.
(19:21):
design your games. And I callthis showing your work.
Yeah,
Brian (19:24):
there's so few people that show their work,
John (19:26):
yeah, yeah, just show it. And also just show when you're
wrong. Hey, I know I'm wronghere. I know this is not the way
it works. I had to do that tomake a game. At some point, we
got to make a game here. Butjust tell me that. And then I'm
like, oh, yeah, I trust you evenmore, instead of it feeling
sneaky, you know.
Brian (19:42):
That's kind of how science is supposed to work. If
you're wrong, you just sayyou're wrong, right?
John (19:47):
Yeah, yeah. If I'm wrong, here's the areas that will show
where I where I could be wrong.Please, someone go investigate
that, because if I'm wrong, I'dlike to know that y'all gain
from that and the other, theother thing I'll mention about
the science behind documents. Wedon't create those internally.
Those were crowd sourced. So wehave a huge group of scientists
who get together all over theworld, a lot of PhDs, a lot of
(20:11):
doctors, a lot of grad studentsand and they will each take a
section, they'll play the game,they understand the science.
They'll take a section, we haveone lead editor, and they'll
write sections to explain eachof the main science principles
in the game, and then where wetook liberties. And so it's like
we tried to do that. We don'twant to be biased. Well, like
(20:32):
this is a third party sayingwhere the game is working, where
the game is not working.
Brian (20:36):
It's peer reviewed.
Jason (20:37):
Yeah, right. Well, okay, so now I know a listserv that we
need to get on, Brian.
Brian (20:41):
yeah, I was gonna say, like, well, I'd like to
volunteer as tribute, but I'msure you've got all of the
expertise that you need.
John (20:48):
We're always open for volunteers, alway. never, never
too many
Jason (20:54):
Are there any games you've went through where that
process of building thescientific model, translating
that into a game where that waseither particularly fun or
particularly difficult.
John (21:05):
Oh, always both. Yeah, it's, it's, it is never easy. If
it's easy, something's wrong,like, what, how did, how did we,
if it's easy, it was like anaccident that it was easy,
right? And I've been working ona game about the human immune
response, working on this gamefor probably eight years.
Brian (21:23):
Okay,
John (21:24):
it's, it's basically, it's a tower defense game where
Brian (21:27):
Fantastic
John (21:28):
it's like a cut on the human skin. Bacteria is coming
in, Staph, strep, pseudococus, Ithink, is the proper name of the
other kind of bacteria that i iscoming in. And then, right now,
it's based mainly on, like abacterial infection, so
(21:49):
bacteria, and fairly commonbacteria, they have on your
skin, and then, and then thegame is basically a tower, tower
defense game, where this cut islike the pathway that the
bacteria is coming in, and thenyour body builds up this immune
response and sends inneutrophils and macrophages, and
then some other things, B cells,T cells, and things like that
that might come from from anadaptive immune response later
(22:12):
on. And the game is supposed tomimic how the body builds up
this response and fights offthese bacteria and closes the
wound. And then we want toexpand this, this little model
and mechanism, into other typesof wounds, or other types of
infections, you know, so youhave, you have skin puncturing,
(22:33):
and then you've got bacteriacoming in. Well, what about like
a nasal infection or an earinfection? Because you don't
have punctured skin,necessarily, you've got native
bacteria that got into yournose. Or what about a different
kind of infection? What about aninfection in your in one of your
organs? Or what about a viral?What about what happens with a
virus? Well, that's totallydifferent.
Jason (22:51):
The covid expansion.
John (22:53):
Oh, yeah, yeah, we'll get, we'll get real controversial. We
could get into all kinds ofstuff, right? I mean, how they
but the crazy thing is, thecrazy thing is, it's not, it's
not cut and dry, even onsomething as simple as a just a
cut on your skin. People'speople's immune systems are
quite unique, depending upon howtheir immune system the immune
(23:16):
system is a reactive thing. It'snot a proactive. You know,
you're not born with a perfectimmune system. You build your
immune system up over time. It'svery reactive. You introduce
things to the human body, and itbuilds up antibodies and builds
up a response to those things,because it's aware of what the
greatest threats are. So so eachbody might respond slightly
differently. And so buildingthis game has been challenging
(23:40):
in many ways, it alsochallenging because it's really
the human immune response isunbelievably complicated, and
any simplification you want tomake is erroneous, right?
Because it's so complicated. Sowe are right now facing we have
been facing that for many years,and I've put the game away and
(24:01):
then gotten it back out, andthen put the game away and then
gotten it back out over eightyears, just over and over and
over again. So yes, a lot offun, but also it's never not a
challenge. And if it is, I wouldsay, why was that? Something's
wrong. We must have somethingwrong here. We must have the
science wrong. If it was thateasy,
Brian (24:18):
well, that's really cool. And that actually addresses
another question is, what isthat, That theme you've been
trying to do, but just haven'tbeen able to crack yet? So I
guess we've got an answer tothat as well, the human immune
John (24:29):
Yeah, the human immune system. That's definitely one.
system.
You know. The other one, though,I would say, is even harder, is
cosmology, space. Oh, because inhere's why, where are the
resources that you're limiting?Where is the human decision?
Where is the, you know, like,like, it's okay, here's the
solar system. They're notchanging paths. They're not
(24:51):
changing trajectory. They're notlike, how do you how do you
enter in player agency, into thesystem? You've got to come up
with something else. Like, oh.Oh, there's people jumping
between the planets. Okay, well,now we're not talking about
science anymore. We're talkingabout science fiction. Maybe
we're talking about futuristicscience, sure, but, but we
(25:11):
really have to. We're reallygrasping for something here when
we try and make a game aroundthat, and I say that because we
have tried to make a game about,you know, planets, solar system,
galaxy, something, right the andit has always been very
challenging. We all we face thesame thing with most physics
concepts. Because physicsconcepts, you know, we actually,
(25:33):
I have been designing the gamefor a long, long time called,
I've called it a lot ofdifferent things, motion, a
Newtonian physics game. Theother name we had for it was
physics Park. And one of mystaff and I got into a argument
about F = ma, force equals masstimes acceleration. And we and
we argued about this for weeks.And we're like, first of all,
(25:56):
it's like, the nerdiest thing inthe world to argue about, you
know, F = ma weeks. But second,it was like, we couldn't with
the argument was about theargue. The argument was about,
like, consequences and agency,you know, and I don't even
remember the details, but it waslike, you know, no force is the
force is the consequence ofsomething accelerating, a mass
(26:17):
accelerating. And you're like,No, you have to push. You have
to, like, push, and theacceleration is due to the
force. And we're going back andgoing, like, how do we use this
in a game? And we kept arguingabout what the like, the
beginning motivation was. And soit finally the game just fell
apart because we couldn't stoparguing about F = ma. Anyway. So
these concepts, about, like, youknow, physics, macro scale
(26:41):
physics, like Planetary Physics,all the way down to, you know, F
= MA with a cart, we couldn'tget around this idea that that's
not the way it works. You know,you can't just run out there in
Brian (26:54):
So anyway, so, yeah, I guess so it's, it's the, it's
the cause versus effects.Problem of like, well, what,
what is the player controlling?It's kind of like you can
imagine a cosmology game whereyou're tweaking the starting
conditions of the universe.We're changing the Planck
constant that but what does thatmean? What does that actually
turn into?
Jason (27:12):
That means you're playing nature gods. Yeah. And we have
several games where that'sbasically what you're doing. You
are the nature God, creatingthis world and populating it
with things, and that's reallythe metaphor of what's going on.
I do wonder, like you mentioned,you've struggled with physics
games, and we've noticed that inthis space, there's way, way,
way more games inspired bybiology than any other field in
(27:35):
the sciences. And I wonder ifit's just because biology is
where things get really, reallycomplicated, and where you have
agency being able to come inwith actual decision making of
creatures or of humans, or ifit's just complex enough that
you can't just plug in someequations and you know the exact
result. There's always noise,there's always randomness. And
so I wonder if that's why itjust has a more handle for
(27:58):
people to go in and turn it intoa game because of just all the
complexity that's there.
John (28:02):
Yeah, I thought about that a lot. I think it does. I think
there are just more likepathways in biology to mimic
with a game. You know, when youtake a pathway, you have clear
like inputs and outputs, and soyou can, you can, you can
produce a game around thoseinputs and outputs, because you
can model it and because you canlike, like, you know, the reason
(28:25):
why something like human diseaseexists is because there's
something is off about theinputs and outputs, whereas with
physics, you can't really changeinputs and outputs. It's like
Newtonian physics. When youchange one thing, there's a very
for the most part, with somevery, very minuscule exceptions.
There's a when you change onething in Newtonian physics,
there's a very defined outcomethat we're aware of exists, and
(28:48):
that's how we know, that's howwe know Newtonian physics is
true outside of the very smalland the very big. Then we've got
to put some fudge factors inthere to make it work. But with
biology, it's like you've got apathway, and the the interesting
things happen when the pathwayis manipulated, or resources
come in, half put together, orhalf put out. And so it's just
(29:10):
easier to, like, play with thatprocess, to play with that
pathway. If that makes sense.
Brian (29:14):
I think it does. I think a lot of biology is like a game,
right? I mean, you look at howliving things interact, and it
is fundamentally, it is riskmanagement. It is a game it is
input versus output.
John (29:25):
Yes, yes, yeah.
Jason (29:27):
There's probably a few theses out there of applying
game theory to natural selectionand how you look at the way
certain organisms have solvedcertain problems, and they
follow a game theory tactic. AndI'm sure that's out there
somewhere.
Brian (29:40):
I mean, you can see the same sorts of ecosystems pop up
again and again and again, withthings occupying the same roles.
You see, you know, hydrodynamicshapes in aquatic reptiles and
in sharks and whales, just overand over and over again, solving
the same problems. What's on thewhat's on the horizon for genius
games?
John (29:58):
Yeah. So. We got pretty heavy into jigsaw puzzles, which
I'm excited about. So we have awhole series of kids floor
puzzles that are illustrated bya certified medical illustrator
from Johns Hopkins University.The two that have not hit retail
yet are the cat and the dog,which we didn't want to make a
(30:21):
cat and dog anatomy puzzle,because I just thought, you
know, it's just no kid wants tosee, you know, their pet puppy's
anatomy. That's not but at thesame time, it's like, well,
that's the animal they'reactually probably most familiar
with.
Brian (30:35):
Those kids who want to become veterinarians, they come
from somewhere.
John (30:39):
absolutely, yes, absolutely. And so that's
something that we have investedpretty heavily into. And the
next release in that line is thecat and the dog. Outside of
that, the games that I amworking on currently are the
game about the human immuneresponse, which the name that
the name we're currently workingwith is just immunology. That's
(31:02):
the name of the game, all right,immunology, a human immune
system game, and that game, Idon't know how long it's gonna
take me. We'll see it's, it'sone of those things where, like,
once the core, the core concept,is working really well, but all
these additional scenarios, it'sthe sky's the limit. I mean,
really, any game, the challengewe have with every game is, when
(31:23):
do we say it's done? Becauseit's never like, perfect. It's
never actually, actually done.It's just weird. We don't want
to work on it anymore. We justwant to publish. Yeah, you
Brian (31:33):
just got to decide when you're done, right? Yeah.
Jason (31:35):
Week is at the same point with scientific manuscripts,
John (31:38):
yeah, yeah. It's like, Is it perfect? No, it's not
yeah,
perfect. Is it done? Yeah. I'msick of writing it. I'm sick of
doing it. It needs to see thelight of day. It's got to get
off of my plate. And then themotion, the motion game, or
physics park, or whatever wedecide to name that. That's
another one. We actually areworking on a game as well that
we're, we've, we've gone backand forth on whether this fits
(32:01):
in the genius games brand ornot, and we've concluded that it
fits well enough to moveforward. But it's a game about
running a Veterinary Clinic, andwe was designed by two
veterinarians, and they broughtus the game, and it was, was a
bit simpler than what we wouldlike to see as far as
mechanisms. But what reallystruck me was the methodology
(32:26):
they use to heal the animals inthe game is what the
veterinarians use in the clinic.And I really like that, because
I would love to design a gameabout how a vet diagnosis issues
within a animal, and then howthey solve and cure that animal
and how they run their clinic.And so it's, it's, it's just
(32:47):
sciencey enough that we feelcomfortable publishing it, but
it's even more, a little bitmore about like running a
veterinarian clinic. So that'sone I'm excited about as well.
And then we have a whole series.We're producing a whole bunch
more of games in the ecosystemline.
Brian (33:05):
We've, we have not played this yet, and we clearly need
to, where do we get started withecosystem
John (33:11):
so I would, I would suggest the first ecosystem game
is probably the place to start.And it's just, it's just a
generic ecosystem, if youreally, if you want to be really
critical, you could probablysay, you know, some of these
animals don't interact the wayyou show in this game. And
that's that'd be a faircriticism of the game. What
(33:33):
we're when we originallylicensed the game, it was a
designer who pitched the game tous when we originally licensed
it. I thought, I don't know, youknow, it's not, it's not heavy
enough in the sciences, but it'snot like, like, it's not, it
doesn't accurately, you know,show how a model, an ecosystem,
functions. But it was, it was,it was a really fun game. And
(33:55):
what I, what I thought, was,this will help us expand our
line and as some more massmarket types of channels where
people will sort of bridge. I'mnot a hard science person. I'm
not a hard game a hard gamer. Ilike some light science, and I
like some animals and some lightgame play. Great. This is a
perfect like intro game, reallyeasy play, card drafting. You're
(34:18):
building an ecosystem. Whodoesn't love doing that, and so
we've we are now expanding thatinto a line of games that that
just hone in on specificecosystems. So we did the
Savannah, and now we're lookingat the Amazon rainforest, as
well as the Australian Outback,
Brian (34:36):
Oh fun,
John (34:37):
as well as what's the other one? A tundra, oh, and
who doesn't like koalas, exceptfor people who actually have
then the Alpine mountains, likelike animals that you'd see, you
know, in the Rockies. And sotrying to really hone in on
specific ecosystems and show theanimals and interactions in that
actually have to work with them?No, it sounds like really fun.
ecosystem with, you know,plants, whatever water basis
(34:57):
they have, whatever fauna basisthey have. What predators they
have, and just show how some ofthem interact. But again, if you
that's the lightest of all thescience games we have, but it is
It seems like it's, it's a greatway to expand out. You could
maybe the most approachable. Ifyou're like, Hey, I know about
the Rockies, or I know aboutsavannas, or I know about, you
know, what Australian,Australian Outback and I like
(35:17):
koalas. You know,
even have, like, prehistoricecosystems or, or, you know,
coral reefs.
Yeah, you've you so you, yeah,you went there. we are designing
(35:40):
a series we haven't told wehaven't mentioned this anywhere,
designing a series that goesfrom now this is like, this is,
you know, does it fit squarelyunder what genius games does?
Nor, you know, traditionally,not really. But we're designing
a whole series that is startingwith the dinosaurs and then
(36:01):
moving into prehistoric humans,and then civilization, and then
colonizing Mars. So we went outlike, Oh, wow. You know, four
game set where you just kind ofsee this trajectory of, you
know, humanity. And, yes, we'retaking a lot more liberties in
that than, you know, we are withother things, but, but it's fun,
but it's fun.
Brian (36:20):
Fun is key.
John (36:21):
Yes.
Jason (36:21):
All right, so I know we're getting near the end of
our window. I've got one morequestion for you. We won't make
you pick among your favoritechildren by asking your favorite
news games put out, but I'mcurious, what are some of your
favorite games, not by geniusgames. What are the favorite
ones you've seen elsewhere inthis ecosystem?
John (36:39):
I have a lot of favorite games that my answer would
actually depend upon who I'mplaying games with, because
that's going to really dictatewhat what I'm going to play
Brian (36:48):
That's a very good answer
John (36:49):
if I'm playing with if I'm trying to introduce people into
gaming, I would play Werewords,which is just, I'm in one of,
like, the best games ever. It'sso good, I'd play werewords, or
I would play crew, or I wouldplay Port Royale. Those are,
like, the three little lightgames. You can teach it in five
(37:09):
to 10 minutes. You can play it.And there's a whole lot of other
really good games out there too,but those are the ones I'd play.
You know, if I had new gamers,if I'm if I'm gonna play games
with people that are likegamers, but they don't want,
they don't have three hours. Ormaybe not even like gamers, but
just people who want a littlemore oomph. I'd play stone age.
I love stone age. I play a lotof Stone Age. Or I would play
(37:31):
like citadels or Santa'sworkshop. Recently, we're
approaching the holidays.Santa's Workshop might be one of
my favorite games right now.It's so good or pandemic pretty,
like, good cooperative, not tooheavy, pretty light fun. If I'm
gonna play, and I'm gonna, like,really go deep, though, and play
some heavier stuff, I would playmage knight, or I would play
(37:52):
through the ages, Puerto Rico,or San Juan, the card game,
which is a great introductoryversion of that. Yeah, I think
that that's, that's, or, youknow, Pandemic Legacy, you know,
why not? Like, why not gothrough that whole thing again?
Yeah, the, those are my favoritegames right now.
Brian (38:08):
Jason and I solidified our friendship over Pandemic
Legacy, and then, actually, westopped playing pandemic during
the pandemic.
Jason (38:16):
Yeah, it was too close to home.
John (38:19):
What a weird game to play during the pandemic. Also, why
not?
Brian (38:23):
Yeah, I think with that, we should probably start
wrapping this up again. Weappreciate you taking the time
to talk to us and, you know,giving us all this great insight
into genius games and sciencegames in general.
Jason (38:34):
Yeah, well, I'm gonna say John. So for people who want to
know more about genius games orabout your products coming out,
where should they look for it?
John (38:40):
Yeah, the easiest place would be our website, genius
games. We're on Facebook, we'reon Instagram. We have a
newsletter. We try and send anewsletter out maybe once every
two months or so. We really tryand not bog people down unless
there is a new release or, youknow, a big promotion going on,
or something like that. So thosewould be the best places.
Jason (39:00):
Thank you so much, John, for coming on. We really
appreciate it. This has been onBrian's bucket list for at least
a year,
Brian (39:05):
absolutely.
Jason (39:05):
So we are very happy to have been able to talk with you,
and we are we really enjoygenius games. We always joke
that you do half our work forus.
Brian (39:13):
Yep, thanks for making our job easy,
Jason (39:15):
and we're really looking forward to playing more of your
games over the next years. Sothank you
John (39:19):
awesome. Thank you, Brian. Thank you, Jason. I appreciate
the time.
Brian (39:22):
All right, we're going to cut it there. Thanks for tuning
in. We hope you have a greatmonth and great games.
Jason (39:26):
And as always, have fun playing dice with the universe.
Brian (39:29):
This has been the gaming with Science Podcast copyright
See ya.
2025 listeners are free to reusethis recording for any non
commercial purpose, as long ascredit is given to gaming with
science. This podcast isproduced with support from the
University of Georgia. Allopinions are those of the hosts,
and do not imply endorsement bythe sponsors. If you wish to
purchase any of the games thatwe talked about, we encourage
(39:50):
you to do so through yourfriendly local game store. Thank
you, and have fun playing dicewith the universe.
I have swag that I'd like tosend you or to your team for the
podcast. Podcast, including aset of our own printed workers
for cytosis. Our little we madekineeples. They're kinesin
meeples, so the actual workersof the cell, I've got all the
(40:11):
colors from cytosis, so I'd loveto send you a copy of those.
Hello and welcome to the gaming with science podcast
(00:03):
where we talk about the sciencebehind some of your favorite
Today we're talking with JohnCoveyou, CEO and founder of
games.
genius games.
Brian (00:16):
Hey everybody. Welcome to a creator interview. I'm Brian.
Jason (00:19):
This is Jason,
Brian (00:20):
and joining us is John Coveyou from genius games, John,
can you introduce yourself?
John (00:26):
Sure, yeah, I'm the owner of genius games. I've owned it
since about 2011 and we makescience accurate board games and
jigsaw puzzles for the hobbymarket.
Brian (00:38):
Those are very cool and very popular. I think I like the
the frog. One in particular isvery good.
John (00:44):
You dissect a frog in a lot of public school science
classes, so we want to make surewe threw that one in there.
Brian (00:49):
I don't think I did a frog. Did you ever do a frog?
John (00:52):
I did. I think it was 10th grade biology.
Jason (00:55):
I don't remember if I ever dissected a frog. I did do
a fetal pig.
Brian (00:59):
I remember we did a heart one time and that actually,
like, screwed me up for a longtime.
John (01:03):
Yeah, I don't want to know what this stuff looks like
inside of my body. Let me justmove on.
Brian (01:10):
Fair enough. We're really excited to be able to get you on
to talk to us today. Our wholereason for existence is to talk
about board games and scienceand genius games. As you can
imagine, we have done many ofyour games before. We've done
cytosis and periodic. We didgenotype. We have more games
planned in the future. We'regoing to be doing cellulose and
probably whatever else comesdown the pipe. Eventually. I'm
(01:33):
sure we'll, we'll touch on most,if not all, of the games in the
genius library.
John (01:37):
Well, that's great, because those are two of my
favorite things, science andboard gaming and both have, I
mean, honestly, had a dramaticimpact on my life in many ways.
I mean, I run a company thatcombines those two, but the
impact goes much deeper thanthat. So I'm very excited to
talk about both of those thingsand how they came together.
Could you
Jason (01:55):
give us a bit of your background there? Because this
is not necessarily a logicalplace to end up. At the
intersection of science andboard game. Your company
basically lives in the space ofmaking what I call hard science
games, games where they're notjust inspired by science, but
they try to portray itaccurately and faithfully. What
brought you to that place?
John (02:13):
Yeah, and you know, it's a long, windy story, but I will
try and summarize it as quick aspossible. I think when you see a
lot of games out there in themarketplace and you see, you
know, a science-based game or aSTEM-based game, what you're
looking at is a product someonewanted to create, to just
generate money. I did not arriveat the place of creating a
(02:34):
product. I arrived. I mean, Ifell in love with the sciences,
and also loved board gaming, andthose two things kind of
randomly came together. So alittle bit about my background
in the sciences. After highschool, I joined the military. I
was in the military for eightyears total, but only three of
it was on active duty. I spentabout a year and a half in Iraq
(02:55):
in Mosul and Samara. And while Iwas there, I was enrolled in
some university classes, and onewas a chemistry class. And
reading through I had, I got alot of time to read through that
chemistry textbook, and someother textbooks I had chemistry
and some in physics, I think Iwas taking at the same time,
because of the the stressfulenvironment that I was in
(03:16):
studying sciences actuallybecame very therapeutic for me,
like allowed me to take my mindoff of the stress, the anxiety,
the difficulty that we werefacing as soldiers in that area,
and I got to think about like,how atoms were built and how the
universe was made, and how atomscombined to form compounds and
(03:37):
molecules And and it actually,it was really nice to, like,
take my mind off of everything.And so I really fell in love
with the sciences in a way,while I was there. And at the
same time, we were playing lotsand lots of games, a lot of
poker, a lot of risk, not, notstuff you would think of when
you think about traditional, youknow, hobby games. When you
(04:00):
think about traditional hobbygames, you know, a lot of times
you're thinking about likeCarcassonne and dominion and
Settlers of Catan, which wasprobably the three most popular,
or a ticket to ride. You'rethinking about these really
popular hobby games you can likebuying target. For me, like
poker, Texas Hold'em was a bigintroduction to getting my mind
wrapped around the humanexperience, around games, and
(04:20):
then we play a lot of risk, andboy, you know, playing risk in a
combat zone with a bunch ofangry soldiers, so many risk
tables flipped.
Brian (04:29):
I feel like risk kind of sits at that, at that space
where I know it's not, it's notquite part of what we would
consider a modern hobby game,except I'm thinking about risk
legacy and how it's kind of beeninducted and almost like
transitions between the gamesthat most people would have at
home and sort of the hobby gamespace.
John (04:46):
Yeah, it was that, yeah, I think Rob Daviau was the guy who
did that, and he's an excellentlegacy designer. And yeah, that
did bring risk into a differentplace in the board gaming space.
But anyway, so I came home. Fromthe military, and I was studying
engineering, so I got my degree,and have a master's degree in
engineering. Went on to work asan engineer for a while. At the
(05:08):
same time, really started toplay a lot of other hobby games
with some of my family andfriends. Got into Dominion
pretty heavy. Started playingsome of the older stuff, like
through the ages and mage night,some of these bigger like, whoa,
you can, I mean, you can playthese things for hours and hours
and hours and real and really,like, never hit the bottom. You
(05:29):
know, there's still, like, moregame to be played. And I was
teaching chemistry. I wasteaching chemistry at the
community college, and it justkind of struck me, like, Why?
Why are we so intimidated by allthese science concepts. You
know, if I was to tell you thatyou have three oranges and three
apples and each of them weighone pound, you could do the
math. It's real simple. But assoon as you remove these objects
(05:53):
that we're really familiar withand you replace them with
neutrons and protons, all of asudden we lose our minds, and
we're just like, I can't do it.It's too hard. It's not that
hard. These are we're justintimidated, I think, by a lot
of these concepts. So So I wasthinking through that, and at
the same time playing games withsome of my friends, and they're
like, memorizing just uselessinformation that they'll never
(06:15):
use in real life science fictiongames. And I'm thinking, like,
why is this the case? And itstruck me that I just, I wish
there was more real sciencebased, like real science based
board games, card gamessomething so that when you're
playing it, you're playingsomething that accurately mimics
a real science concept, realprocess. And I think cyt-, you
(06:38):
know, jumping forward, I thinkcytosis, in a lot of ways, is
one that I'm the most proud of,in that sense, because it,
because it's just such aninteresting concept, the human
cell, that game was reallydesigned around the
infrastructure that governs theactivity within a human cell. So
that's how it happened. That'sthat's the backstory.
Brian (06:56):
What is the mission statement of genius games?
John (06:59):
Yeah, that's a great question. We have toyed around
with a few different missionstatements. We say our core
purpose is to create sciencebased products that engage just
allow people to have fun withthe science concept. The wording
isn't too tight on it. You know,I think sometimes you see
(07:20):
mission statements, and you'relike, what does that even mean?
Brian (07:23):
You got to create synergy.
John (07:25):
Yeah, Team synergy. And, like, Listen, if I'm in a team
and it's not synergetic, I'mleaving. So I don't know what
Brian (07:32):
something that we've been dealing with, because, again,
this means,
we're in this space, and wehave, you know, read designer
diaries and interviews and whatpeople have said when they're
trying to design games that arelike this, where they're trying
to use science concepts or havesort of an educational undertone
to what they're doing. We did anepisode on daybreak, which is
(07:52):
all about climate change,designed by Matt Leacock and
Matteo Menapace, and they werevery explicit in the designer
diary, they didn't want an"educational game", quote,
unquote, very specifically, andthat bothered me that this idea
that educational is a dirty wordin the games industry, or they
said chocolate dipped broccoli.I'm just curious, what are your
(08:14):
thoughts on that, and how do youkind of deal with that sort of
intrinsic bias that aeducational game can't be a fun
game?
John (08:20):
Yeah, that that is such a tough place for us. It is true.
The word education in the gamingspace is kind of a dirty word.
And I think the reason whythere, there were so many
companies or people trying tocreate products that were really
just to generate revenue to makemoney, and so you saw a lot of
(08:41):
these larger companies do that,and you have things like
flashcards that are referred toas games, and they're not game,
they're not they're not games,they're just activities. And
then a lot of people tried tomake something they could sell
that maybe accurately depictedsome science concept, but it
really wasn't fun. Wasn't fun atall. So the passion that went
(09:01):
into, or maybe the motivation, Iwould say, that went into
creating that product was justbased upon making money, not on
making something for the hobby.I love making things for the
hobby. I love making games. Ilove thinking about games and
why people have fun or arefrustrated in the middle of a
(09:22):
decision, what makes a decisionin the game really interesting?
That's a question that is reallyhard to answer and really easy
to answer at the same time, it'sreally easy to answer that, but
you could talk about it forhours and hours, days, weeks,
years, right? What makes it whatmakes a decision in a game
really interesting to make, andif you're not able to sit and
(09:43):
think about that and really godeep into what makes it a
decision in a game interesting,then you're probably not going
to have a game that offersinteresting decisions or is not
very fun, or is not veryenjoyable. And then, like they
mentioned, chocolate coveredbroccoli, you just have.
Broccoli, and you basically gotto make people eat it. Somehow,
(10:04):
you slap the word game on it,even though it's not a fun game
or a good game, right? What? Andyou know, when we market our
games. So I would not considerour company an educational game
design company. We're not likean educational game publisher,
although, if someone was to say,well, you make games that are
like educational, right? I wouldsay you can use them for
(10:27):
educational purposes. We have alot of teachers, tons and tons
of teachers that take our gamesand they use them in the
classroom. And that's fantastic,and that really brings me joy.
But we don't actually designgames so that a teacher can pick
it up and play it and use it intheir classroom. What we design
a game for, we take a scienceconcept that you would find, and
(10:49):
let's say a biology or achemistry or a physics 101,
class, so a standard conceptyou'd find in an entry-level
science class, and we want totake that concept and we want to
make a game about that concept,that even if you remove the
science and put zombies ordragons or ninjas or you name
it, the game itself would wouldstand all on its own. People
(11:11):
would find the game fun. They'dfind the game worth their time.
They'd pay to play that game.They'd choose to play that game
over any other game. It just sohappens that when a scientist
looks at that game, they go,"Wow, this science is really
accurate". Now, if you want tocall that an educational game,
you know, be my guest. Call itwhatever you'd like. It's really
(11:32):
hard to use terms. You know, weuse terms like educational or we
use the English vocabulary isused to make sense of things
that we don't understand. So theword educational is a very fast
word to understand something. Ihave a hard time calling our
games educational around hobbygame players, because they have,
they have an idea about what aneducation educational game is,
(11:55):
and that is a game that is meantto force you to eat your
broccoli by covering it inchocolate. Yeah? And that's not
what we do. We want you to eatit because you're like, This is
good. This is fun.
Brian (12:06):
It's really good. Broccoli.
John (12:07):
It's really, yeah, it was prepared by a chef.
Brian (12:14):
language for this is difficult, we say, I say, a hard
science game, yeah? Which Ithink, or, like you said, a
realistic science game is thatkind of how you think about
this?
John (12:23):
I'm not too married to any specific language. We do
normally say our games are realscience themed games, or hard
science themed games, gamesdesigned around a science
concept. It's tough, becausethere's not really any clear
language to use when someone'slike, oh. Because anything I
say, they say, Oh. So you makeeducational games. I mean, we
(12:44):
design our games for hobbygamers, right? You'll, you'll
see any of our games that youplay, you'll see the exact same
mechanisms out there in thehobby and other games. Oh, yeah.
Like Cytosis, worker placementgame, yeah. I mean, there's,
there's probably 100 differentworker placement games out
there, the ecosystem line, allcard drafting. Um, Ion a
compound building game that'sendorsed by the National Science
(13:07):
Teachers Association. There'snothing different about the
basic mechanisms in that game,as there is from Sushi Go or
seven wonders.
Brian (13:14):
It's card draft. Oh, so it's card drafting, set man, set
creation game.
John (13:18):
That's right.
Jason (13:19):
So I've got a question for you on this design is that,
as you're making a hard sciencegame, you've kind of got the two
goals there. You want to be afun game, and that is definitely
a top priority, obviously, fromwhat you said, but you also want
to be beholden to the realscience. And so my question is,
what do you do? How do youmanage when those come into
(13:40):
conflict when, when do youdecide to make a simplification
for the sake of fun gameplay,when do you decide to to make
the mechanics morph to match thematch the reality? How do you
make those decisions?
Brian (13:52):
And we have a specific example as well, and like and
again, we we play games in thehobby. So we know that the
mutations in genotype are a gamething, because if you had it
realistic, it would neverhappen, and it wouldn't come up,
and it would actually break thegame if it happened the way that
it needed to.
It's
that.just
John (14:09):
Okay, so let me I'll address this in two ways. The
first is, I'll tell you whattraditionally happens, and then
I'll tell you how we designgames. We get pitches all the
time from designers, and theysay, Hey, I got a really great
game, you know, you have thismechanism and that mechanism,
(14:31):
and it's themed around whateverbiology, cell biology or plant
biology. One of the firstquestions I ask is it "could,
could you just completely takethis theme off and replace it
with anything else?" Right? Now,was this really a game designed
around something else and youjust slapped this biology design
(14:53):
on top of it. Usually the answeris yes, the game is just themed
cell. So you just keep doing that, right? You turn this
around. You could just slap anyold theme on it. You can kind of
model you have into actualresources. You limit them with
tell when you play a game likethat that this theme is not
game mechanisms, traditionalgame mechanisms, and then you
really embedded in the in thedesign. When we make a game, we
start with a concept, a scienceconcept, and the first thing
just play test it, play test it,that's a it's really
(15:16):
that I do personally. Me as Imap that whole science concept
out, I map out the primaryresources involved in that game.
So let's talk about psychosis asan example. Because I think that
that's cell biology is probablythe most like ubiquitous concept
you you don't get to you don'tget through high school biology
(15:40):
without learning up the humancell at least once, right? Oh,
something that you that geniusgames does, that nobody else in
mitochondria, the powerhouse ofthe cell. Every time I talk
the space really makes as muchof a point of doing. And one of
about this, someone says that,so we'll just get that out of
the way. So cell biology, okay,What? What? What are the basic
resources of a human cell? Well,you have nucleic acids,
(16:02):
carbohydrates, you haveproteins, and you have lipids,
the things that really make meappreciate the way that you
fats, and I might be missingsomething else in there, because
I feel like it's, oh, yeah,energy ATP. These, if you take a
biology class, you're going tohear about these four or five
resources over and over and overagain. I mean, you read them on
(16:24):
the package food food labels,right? How many, how many
carbohydrates does this have?How much protein does it have,
how much fat does it have? Thereason why those three things
show up, it doesn't tell you howmany nucleic acids it has, but
the reason why those threeresources show up is because
(16:46):
they're literally the buildingblocks of the human body.
They're the building blocks of ahuman cell. And when we built,
when I first designed that game,I stopped and I said, you know,
what are the basic buildingblocks inside the human body?
Well, it's the mainmacromolecules, and here they
(17:08):
are. Okay. Now, how does a humancell now? How is a human cell
built? Well, a human cell has aGolgi apparatus. It has
endoplasmic reticulum, it has anucleus, it has a plasma
membrane. So like so, how do allthese things work? And we
basically mapped all that out.Here's how DNA replicates.
(17:30):
Here's how DNA turns into RNA.Here's how RNA turns into
proteins. Here's how theproteins interact with other
lipids to decorate them, to turnthem into useful molecules and
hormones and other things. Andhere's each organelle involved
in that process. We just mappedit all out. There's no game
(17:51):
there's no game here. There'szero game here. It's basically a
model that shows how resourcesmove through the different
factories within a human cell,and then we say, Okay, what is
the motivation of the humancell? What is it trying to
achieve? Well, the human cell istrying to thrive on its own.
(18:14):
Produce resources to communicatethroughout the body. Produce
resources for the body to use.Okay, how could a player take on
the same motivation as a celland then be awarded points for
those things. And how could wecreate or put some mechanisms in
place to limit the amount ofresources in certain ways so
(18:36):
that a player has to make aninteresting decision to gain
their path towards whateverthey're motivated towards
scoring points, whatever it is,and then that's where basic game
mechanisms come into play.Worker placement was perfect.
You place a worker that takesthe spot up. You place a you
(18:58):
place a worker inside of thenucleus, and you get RNA. You
place a worker the mitochondria.Well, there you can take some
ATP, or you can convert yourcarbohydrates into ATP.
(19:21):
design your games. And I callthis showing your work.
Yeah,
Brian (19:24):
there's so few people that show their work,
John (19:26):
yeah, yeah, just show it. And also just show when you're
wrong. Hey, I know I'm wronghere. I know this is not the way
it works. I had to do that tomake a game. At some point, we
got to make a game here. Butjust tell me that. And then I'm
like, oh, yeah, I trust you evenmore, instead of it feeling
sneaky, you know.
Brian (19:42):
That's kind of how science is supposed to work. If
you're wrong, you just sayyou're wrong, right?
John (19:47):
Yeah, yeah. If I'm wrong, here's the areas that will show
where I where I could be wrong.Please, someone go investigate
that, because if I'm wrong, I'dlike to know that y'all gain
from that and the other, theother thing I'll mention about
the science behind documents. Wedon't create those internally.
Those were crowd sourced. So wehave a huge group of scientists
who get together all over theworld, a lot of PhDs, a lot of
(20:11):
doctors, a lot of grad studentsand and they will each take a
section, they'll play the game,they understand the science.
They'll take a section, we haveone lead editor, and they'll
write sections to explain eachof the main science principles
in the game, and then where wetook liberties. And so it's like
we tried to do that. We don'twant to be biased. Well, like
(20:32):
this is a third party sayingwhere the game is working, where
the game is not working.
Brian (20:36):
It's peer reviewed.
Jason (20:37):
Yeah, right. Well, okay, so now I know a listserv that we
need to get on, Brian.
Brian (20:41):
yeah, I was gonna say, like, well, I'd like to
volunteer as tribute, but I'msure you've got all of the
expertise that you need.
John (20:48):
We're always open for volunteers, alway. never, never
too many
Jason (20:54):
Are there any games you've went through where that
process of building thescientific model, translating
that into a game where that waseither particularly fun or
particularly difficult.
John (21:05):
Oh, always both. Yeah, it's, it's, it is never easy. If
it's easy, something's wrong,like, what, how did, how did we,
if it's easy, it was like anaccident that it was easy,
right? And I've been working ona game about the human immune
response, working on this gamefor probably eight years.
Brian (21:23):
Okay,
John (21:24):
it's, it's basically, it's a tower defense game where
Brian (21:27):
Fantastic
John (21:28):
it's like a cut on the human skin. Bacteria is coming
in, Staph, strep, pseudococus, Ithink, is the proper name of the
other kind of bacteria that i iscoming in. And then, right now,
it's based mainly on, like abacterial infection, so
(21:49):
bacteria, and fairly commonbacteria, they have on your
skin, and then, and then thegame is basically a tower, tower
defense game, where this cut islike the pathway that the
bacteria is coming in, and thenyour body builds up this immune
response and sends inneutrophils and macrophages, and
then some other things, B cells,T cells, and things like that
that might come from from anadaptive immune response later
(22:12):
on. And the game is supposed tomimic how the body builds up
this response and fights offthese bacteria and closes the
wound. And then we want toexpand this, this little model
and mechanism, into other typesof wounds, or other types of
infections, you know, so youhave, you have skin puncturing,
(22:33):
and then you've got bacteriacoming in. Well, what about like
a nasal infection or an earinfection? Because you don't
have punctured skin,necessarily, you've got native
bacteria that got into yournose. Or what about a different
kind of infection? What about aninfection in your in one of your
organs? Or what about a viral?What about what happens with a
virus? Well, that's totallydifferent.
Jason (22:51):
The covid expansion.
John (22:53):
Oh, yeah, yeah, we'll get, we'll get real controversial. We
could get into all kinds ofstuff, right? I mean, how they
but the crazy thing is, thecrazy thing is, it's not, it's
not cut and dry, even onsomething as simple as a just a
cut on your skin. People'speople's immune systems are
quite unique, depending upon howtheir immune system the immune
(23:16):
system is a reactive thing. It'snot a proactive. You know,
you're not born with a perfectimmune system. You build your
immune system up over time. It'svery reactive. You introduce
things to the human body, and itbuilds up antibodies and builds
up a response to those things,because it's aware of what the
greatest threats are. So so eachbody might respond slightly
differently. And so buildingthis game has been challenging
(23:40):
in many ways, it alsochallenging because it's really
the human immune response isunbelievably complicated, and
any simplification you want tomake is erroneous, right?
Because it's so complicated. Sowe are right now facing we have
been facing that for many years,and I've put the game away and
(24:01):
then gotten it back out, andthen put the game away and then
gotten it back out over eightyears, just over and over and
over again. So yes, a lot offun, but also it's never not a
challenge. And if it is, I wouldsay, why was that? Something's
wrong. We must have somethingwrong here. We must have the
science wrong. If it was thateasy,
Brian (24:18):
well, that's really cool. And that actually addresses
another question is, what isthat, That theme you've been
trying to do, but just haven'tbeen able to crack yet? So I
guess we've got an answer tothat as well, the human immune
John (24:29):
Yeah, the human immune system. That's definitely one.
system.
You know. The other one, though,I would say, is even harder, is
cosmology, space. Oh, because inhere's why, where are the
resources that you're limiting?Where is the human decision?
Where is the, you know, like,like, it's okay, here's the
solar system. They're notchanging paths. They're not
(24:51):
changing trajectory. They're notlike, how do you how do you
enter in player agency, into thesystem? You've got to come up
with something else. Like, oh.Oh, there's people jumping
between the planets. Okay, well,now we're not talking about
science anymore. We're talkingabout science fiction. Maybe
we're talking about futuristicscience, sure, but, but we
(25:11):
really have to. We're reallygrasping for something here when
we try and make a game aroundthat, and I say that because we
have tried to make a game about,you know, planets, solar system,
galaxy, something, right the andit has always been very
challenging. We all we face thesame thing with most physics
concepts. Because physicsconcepts, you know, we actually,
(25:33):
I have been designing the gamefor a long, long time called,
I've called it a lot ofdifferent things, motion, a
Newtonian physics game. Theother name we had for it was
physics Park. And one of mystaff and I got into a argument
about F = ma, force equals masstimes acceleration. And we and
we argued about this for weeks.And we're like, first of all,
(25:56):
it's like, the nerdiest thing inthe world to argue about, you
know, F = ma weeks. But second,it was like, we couldn't with
the argument was about theargue. The argument was about,
like, consequences and agency,you know, and I don't even
remember the details, but it waslike, you know, no force is the
force is the consequence ofsomething accelerating, a mass
(26:17):
accelerating. And you're like,No, you have to push. You have
to, like, push, and theacceleration is due to the
force. And we're going back andgoing, like, how do we use this
in a game? And we kept arguingabout what the like, the
beginning motivation was. And soit finally the game just fell
apart because we couldn't stoparguing about F = ma. Anyway. So
these concepts, about, like, youknow, physics, macro scale
(26:41):
physics, like Planetary Physics,all the way down to, you know, F
= MA with a cart, we couldn'tget around this idea that that's
not the way it works. You know,you can't just run out there in
Brian (26:54):
So anyway, so, yeah, I guess so it's, it's the, it's
the cause versus effects.Problem of like, well, what,
what is the player controlling?It's kind of like you can
imagine a cosmology game whereyou're tweaking the starting
conditions of the universe.We're changing the Planck
constant that but what does thatmean? What does that actually
turn into?
Jason (27:12):
That means you're playing nature gods. Yeah. And we have
several games where that'sbasically what you're doing. You
are the nature God, creatingthis world and populating it
with things, and that's reallythe metaphor of what's going on.
I do wonder, like you mentioned,you've struggled with physics
games, and we've noticed that inthis space, there's way, way,
way more games inspired bybiology than any other field in
(27:35):
the sciences. And I wonder ifit's just because biology is
where things get really, reallycomplicated, and where you have
agency being able to come inwith actual decision making of
creatures or of humans, or ifit's just complex enough that
you can't just plug in someequations and you know the exact
result. There's always noise,there's always randomness. And
so I wonder if that's why itjust has a more handle for
(27:58):
people to go in and turn it intoa game because of just all the
complexity that's there.
John (28:02):
Yeah, I thought about that a lot. I think it does. I think
there are just more likepathways in biology to mimic
with a game. You know, when youtake a pathway, you have clear
like inputs and outputs, and soyou can, you can, you can
produce a game around thoseinputs and outputs, because you
can model it and because you canlike, like, you know, the reason
(28:25):
why something like human diseaseexists is because there's
something is off about theinputs and outputs, whereas with
physics, you can't really changeinputs and outputs. It's like
Newtonian physics. When youchange one thing, there's a very
for the most part, with somevery, very minuscule exceptions.
There's a when you change onething in Newtonian physics,
there's a very defined outcomethat we're aware of exists, and
(28:48):
that's how we know, that's howwe know Newtonian physics is
true outside of the very smalland the very big. Then we've got
to put some fudge factors inthere to make it work. But with
biology, it's like you've got apathway, and the the interesting
things happen when the pathwayis manipulated, or resources
come in, half put together, orhalf put out. And so it's just
(29:10):
easier to, like, play with thatprocess, to play with that
pathway. If that makes sense.
Brian (29:14):
I think it does. I think a lot of biology is like a game,
right? I mean, you look at howliving things interact, and it
is fundamentally, it is riskmanagement. It is a game it is
input versus output.
John (29:25):
Yes, yes, yeah.
Jason (29:27):
There's probably a few theses out there of applying
game theory to natural selectionand how you look at the way
certain organisms have solvedcertain problems, and they
follow a game theory tactic. AndI'm sure that's out there
somewhere.
Brian (29:40):
I mean, you can see the same sorts of ecosystems pop up
again and again and again, withthings occupying the same roles.
You see, you know, hydrodynamicshapes in aquatic reptiles and
in sharks and whales, just overand over and over again, solving
the same problems. What's on thewhat's on the horizon for genius
games?
John (29:58):
Yeah. So. We got pretty heavy into jigsaw puzzles, which
I'm excited about. So we have awhole series of kids floor
puzzles that are illustrated bya certified medical illustrator
from Johns Hopkins University.The two that have not hit retail
yet are the cat and the dog,which we didn't want to make a
(30:21):
cat and dog anatomy puzzle,because I just thought, you
know, it's just no kid wants tosee, you know, their pet puppy's
anatomy. That's not but at thesame time, it's like, well,
that's the animal they'reactually probably most familiar
with.
Brian (30:35):
Those kids who want to become veterinarians, they come
from somewhere.
John (30:39):
absolutely, yes, absolutely. And so that's
something that we have investedpretty heavily into. And the
next release in that line is thecat and the dog. Outside of
that, the games that I amworking on currently are the
game about the human immuneresponse, which the name that
the name we're currently workingwith is just immunology. That's
(31:02):
the name of the game, all right,immunology, a human immune
system game, and that game, Idon't know how long it's gonna
take me. We'll see it's, it'sone of those things where, like,
once the core, the core concept,is working really well, but all
these additional scenarios, it'sthe sky's the limit. I mean,
really, any game, the challengewe have with every game is, when
(31:23):
do we say it's done? Becauseit's never like, perfect. It's
never actually, actually done.It's just weird. We don't want
to work on it anymore. We justwant to publish. Yeah, you
Brian (31:33):
just got to decide when you're done, right? Yeah.
Jason (31:35):
Week is at the same point with scientific manuscripts,
John (31:38):
yeah, yeah. It's like, Is it perfect? No, it's not
yeah,
perfect. Is it done? Yeah. I'msick of writing it. I'm sick of
doing it. It needs to see thelight of day. It's got to get
off of my plate. And then themotion, the motion game, or
physics park, or whatever wedecide to name that. That's
another one. We actually areworking on a game as well that
we're, we've, we've gone backand forth on whether this fits
(32:01):
in the genius games brand ornot, and we've concluded that it
fits well enough to moveforward. But it's a game about
running a Veterinary Clinic, andwe was designed by two
veterinarians, and they broughtus the game, and it was, was a
bit simpler than what we wouldlike to see as far as
mechanisms. But what reallystruck me was the methodology
(32:26):
they use to heal the animals inthe game is what the
veterinarians use in the clinic.And I really like that, because
I would love to design a gameabout how a vet diagnosis issues
within a animal, and then howthey solve and cure that animal
and how they run their clinic.And so it's, it's, it's just
(32:47):
sciencey enough that we feelcomfortable publishing it, but
it's even more, a little bitmore about like running a
veterinarian clinic. So that'sone I'm excited about as well.
And then we have a whole series.We're producing a whole bunch
more of games in the ecosystemline.
Brian (33:05):
We've, we have not played this yet, and we clearly need
to, where do we get started withecosystem
John (33:11):
so I would, I would suggest the first ecosystem game
is probably the place to start.And it's just, it's just a
generic ecosystem, if youreally, if you want to be really
critical, you could probablysay, you know, some of these
animals don't interact the wayyou show in this game. And
that's that'd be a faircriticism of the game. What
(33:33):
we're when we originallylicensed the game, it was a
designer who pitched the game tous when we originally licensed
it. I thought, I don't know, youknow, it's not, it's not heavy
enough in the sciences, but it'snot like, like, it's not, it
doesn't accurately, you know,show how a model, an ecosystem,
functions. But it was, it was,it was a really fun game. And
(33:55):
what I, what I thought, was,this will help us expand our
line and as some more massmarket types of channels where
people will sort of bridge. I'mnot a hard science person. I'm
not a hard game a hard gamer. Ilike some light science, and I
like some animals and some lightgame play. Great. This is a
perfect like intro game, reallyeasy play, card drafting. You're
(34:18):
building an ecosystem. Whodoesn't love doing that, and so
we've we are now expanding thatinto a line of games that that
just hone in on specificecosystems. So we did the
Savannah, and now we're lookingat the Amazon rainforest, as
well as the Australian Outback,
Brian (34:36):
Oh fun,
John (34:37):
as well as what's the other one? A tundra, oh, and
who doesn't like koalas, exceptfor people who actually have
then the Alpine mountains, likelike animals that you'd see, you
know, in the Rockies. And sotrying to really hone in on
specific ecosystems and show theanimals and interactions in that
actually have to work with them?No, it sounds like really fun.
ecosystem with, you know,plants, whatever water basis
(34:57):
they have, whatever fauna basisthey have. What predators they
have, and just show how some ofthem interact. But again, if you
that's the lightest of all thescience games we have, but it is
It seems like it's, it's a greatway to expand out. You could
maybe the most approachable. Ifyou're like, Hey, I know about
the Rockies, or I know aboutsavannas, or I know about, you
know, what Australian,Australian Outback and I like
(35:17):
koalas. You know,
even have, like, prehistoricecosystems or, or, you know,
coral reefs.
Yeah, you've you so you, yeah,you went there. we are designing
(35:40):
a series we haven't told wehaven't mentioned this anywhere,
designing a series that goesfrom now this is like, this is,
you know, does it fit squarelyunder what genius games does?
Nor, you know, traditionally,not really. But we're designing
a whole series that is startingwith the dinosaurs and then
(36:01):
moving into prehistoric humans,and then civilization, and then
colonizing Mars. So we went outlike, Oh, wow. You know, four
game set where you just kind ofsee this trajectory of, you
know, humanity. And, yes, we'retaking a lot more liberties in
that than, you know, we are withother things, but, but it's fun,
but it's fun.
Brian (36:20):
Fun is key.
John (36:21):
Yes.
Jason (36:21):
All right, so I know we're getting near the end of
our window. I've got one morequestion for you. We won't make
you pick among your favoritechildren by asking your favorite
news games put out, but I'mcurious, what are some of your
favorite games, not by geniusgames. What are the favorite
ones you've seen elsewhere inthis ecosystem?
John (36:39):
I have a lot of favorite games that my answer would
actually depend upon who I'mplaying games with, because
that's going to really dictatewhat what I'm going to play
Brian (36:48):
That's a very good answer
John (36:49):
if I'm playing with if I'm trying to introduce people into
gaming, I would play Werewords,which is just, I'm in one of,
like, the best games ever. It'sso good, I'd play werewords, or
I would play crew, or I wouldplay Port Royale. Those are,
like, the three little lightgames. You can teach it in five
(37:09):
to 10 minutes. You can play it.And there's a whole lot of other
really good games out there too,but those are the ones I'd play.
You know, if I had new gamers,if I'm if I'm gonna play games
with people that are likegamers, but they don't want,
they don't have three hours. Ormaybe not even like gamers, but
just people who want a littlemore oomph. I'd play stone age.
I love stone age. I play a lotof Stone Age. Or I would play
(37:31):
like citadels or Santa'sworkshop. Recently, we're
approaching the holidays.Santa's Workshop might be one of
my favorite games right now.It's so good or pandemic pretty,
like, good cooperative, not tooheavy, pretty light fun. If I'm
gonna play, and I'm gonna, like,really go deep, though, and play
some heavier stuff, I would playmage knight, or I would play
(37:52):
through the ages, Puerto Rico,or San Juan, the card game,
which is a great introductoryversion of that. Yeah, I think
that that's, that's, or, youknow, Pandemic Legacy, you know,
why not? Like, why not gothrough that whole thing again?
Yeah, the, those are my favoritegames right now.
Brian (38:08):
Jason and I solidified our friendship over Pandemic
Legacy, and then, actually, westopped playing pandemic during
the pandemic.
Jason (38:16):
Yeah, it was too close to home.
John (38:19):
What a weird game to play during the pandemic. Also, why
not?
Brian (38:23):
Yeah, I think with that, we should probably start
wrapping this up again. Weappreciate you taking the time
to talk to us and, you know,giving us all this great insight
into genius games and sciencegames in general.
Jason (38:34):
Yeah, well, I'm gonna say John. So for people who want to
know more about genius games orabout your products coming out,
where should they look for it?
John (38:40):
Yeah, the easiest place would be our website, genius
games. We're on Facebook, we'reon Instagram. We have a
newsletter. We try and send anewsletter out maybe once every
two months or so. We really tryand not bog people down unless
there is a new release or, youknow, a big promotion going on,
or something like that. So thosewould be the best places.
Jason (39:00):
Thank you so much, John, for coming on. We really
appreciate it. This has been onBrian's bucket list for at least
a year,
Brian (39:05):
absolutely.
Jason (39:05):
So we are very happy to have been able to talk with you,
and we are we really enjoygenius games. We always joke
that you do half our work forus.
Brian (39:13):
Yep, thanks for making our job easy,
Jason (39:15):
and we're really looking forward to playing more of your
games over the next years. Sothank you
John (39:19):
awesome. Thank you, Brian. Thank you, Jason. I appreciate
the time.
Brian (39:22):
All right, we're going to cut it there. Thanks for tuning
in. We hope you have a greatmonth and great games.
Jason (39:26):
And as always, have fun playing dice with the universe.
Brian (39:29):
This has been the gaming with Science Podcast copyright
See ya.
2025 listeners are free to reusethis recording for any non
commercial purpose, as long ascredit is given to gaming with
science. This podcast isproduced with support from the
University of Georgia. Allopinions are those of the hosts,
and do not imply endorsement bythe sponsors. If you wish to
purchase any of the games thatwe talked about, we encourage
(39:50):
you to do so through yourfriendly local game store. Thank
you, and have fun playing dicewith the universe.
I have swag that I'd like tosend you or to your team for the
podcast. Podcast, including aset of our own printed workers
for cytosis. Our little we madekineeples. They're kinesin
meeples, so the actual workersof the cell, I've got all the
(40:11):
colors from cytosis, so I'd loveto send you a copy of those.
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