Ethan Wilde: Welcome everybody it's just not six o'clock we might wait another minute or so, to see if we have any other attendees.
Ethan Wilde: And then we'll get started.
Eric Vogel: I appreciate you all coming out for yet another thing on zoom.
Ethan Wilde: Alright, maybe we'll go ahead and get started, now, good evening welcome everybody to the second event in our semester long speaking series, game views perspectives on making games. I'm Ethan Wilde - the program coordinator of the game development program here at Santa Rosa junior college.
Ethan Wilde: I have the great pleasure of having an opportunity to introduce Dr Eric vogel to our.
Ethan Wilde: Esteemed audience tonight online here in zoom.
Ethan Wilde: Dr vogel is the designer of many games, including kotara don't turn your back Zeppelin attack cambria are more Erica and the Dresden files cooperative card game.
Ethan Wilde: Dr bubbles latest game first empires is right now on pre order and, as you can see i'm referring to him with the prefix Dr.
Ethan Wilde: Eric vocals also a.
Ethan Wilde: Professor of psychology in the Bay area and.
Ethan Wilde: we're very pleased to have you here tonight, Dr vogel welcome.
Eric Vogel: Thanks, very much for having me it's great to be here.
Ethan Wilde: we're going to.
Ethan Wilde: start off tonight in a casual conversation together, Dr vogel and I talking about board game design and so i'm just going to go ahead and dive right in and and ask you when did you first become interested in making board games and what got you involved in this.
Eric Vogel: Well um I had played board games as a hobby when I was a when I was a kid when I was a teenager and then kind of stopped when I went away to college, because I.
Eric Vogel: Just became too cool for it for a little while kind of give it up and then, of course, I went to Grad school and I was really too busy to have fun in any respect.
Eric Vogel: But while I was training the psycho therapist, among other things, working with children, you play a certain amount of board games when you're doing therapy with children.
Eric Vogel: I got introduced to psycho therapeutic board games like the talking feeling doing game and initially I wanted to create my own psychotherapeutic board game which is actually the first board game, I did.
Eric Vogel: see if I can all share screen for you.
Ethan Wilde: that'd be great.
Eric Vogel: And let's see here.
Eric Vogel: powerpoints going.
Eric Vogel: So.
Eric Vogel: That game was land of Simon, which is a board game you wouldn't play it for fun it's a board game to teach cvt cognitive psychotherapy skills to children and kid friendly way.
Eric Vogel: So you see their cognitive distortions are represented is monsters sort of like pokemon, as are the thinking skills that you use and cpt to combat.
Negative thinking.
Eric Vogel: So that was how I got started.
Eric Vogel: And I guess, I should say, then that creating this therapy board game kind of got me interested in gaming again and.
Eric Vogel: I happen to go to a couple of game parties, where I got reintroduced the hobby and started playing board games again and got introduced to kind of the new.
Eric Vogel: generation of board games that came along, in the very late 90s coming out of Europe, just a lot better than the board games that were around when I was teenager, and so I was hooked on the hobby again at that point and just about any.
Eric Vogel: thing that I do for fun as a consumer, I eventually want to try my hand at as a creator that's just sort of my way of being.
Ethan Wilde: that's great did any of those Games that used to play or your your subject matter expertise.
Ethan Wilde: Come to influence you having some kind of game design philosophy, or how do you think about your approach to game design.
Eric Vogel: um.
Eric Vogel: I think my approach to game design is just to you know I design the ideas I have because I can't design the ideas I don't have is really what it comes down to I.
Eric Vogel: And I don't have I generated quite a few games, but I, in a way of philosophy is almost like making a rule for yourself about.
Eric Vogel: What board game ideas you won't act on it doesn't necessarily people this comes up a lot with students when i'm working with them to come up with an idea for their dissertations so for you students in the audience, this will be irrelevant.
Eric Vogel: Point for you and your academic careers is they start by saying, well, I know I want to do something in neuroscience or I know I want to do something in sports psychology.
Eric Vogel: And I think they have the idea that it's almost like sculpting that if I carve away all the ideas I don't want to do i'll be left with the idea.
Eric Vogel: That I want and it doesn't work that way at all instead you're just making a rule for yourself that says well any good idea I have from my dissertation that isn't neuro psychology i'm going to throw away.
Eric Vogel: So, in a sense, I think, to have a.
Eric Vogel: it's probably not quite true to say I don't have a philosophy about game design, but.
Eric Vogel: I don't kick any game ideas, out of bed for eating crackers.
Ethan Wilde: Do you think of your games as related by some unifying theme.
Eric Vogel: they're probably related a little bit stylistically you know I it's kind of true that I don't have a design philosophy, but it's also true that, whatever medium i'm working in I feel like style kind of happens just naturally I don't know if.
Eric Vogel: other kinds of artists feel that way but i've never felt like oh i've got to work at having a style it's like well, maybe just design things they're going to be a product of view that's going to inject style and I think the.
Eric Vogel: kind of my early board game that I did as hobby games, I say games are for fun, not for therapy.
Eric Vogel: It just so happened that, as I was kind of struggling to make good one, one of the things that I found.
Eric Vogel: helped early on, was streamlining it making it shorter faster, reducing the time between the downtime between turns and reducing the number of pieces of the game doing something more minimalistic.
Eric Vogel: And, in particular.
Eric Vogel: When I published cambria, which was the first hobby game I published I initially self published it in a desktop published edition back in the days before there was a kickstarter and I didn't feel like spending much money on it so reducing the number of components.
Eric Vogel: made it much easier to do that way, and then later when I sold it to a real publisher, which is what you see here and became my first.
Eric Vogel: professionally published hobby game that was also a selling point that publisher that they could lower the price point for the game, it was a faster entry level game, so I think.
Eric Vogel: kind of the common stylistic elements across my game designs his then that they tend to be relatively short light to medium weight games a hell of a lot of strategy for their level of complexity, but I don't try to make.
Eric Vogel: Three hour long, complicated games, for the most part, maybe someday well but.
Eric Vogel: hasn't really been what I felt like doing up to now, I think the elegant simplicity is where it's at for me in terms of design that's what I find appealing, the ability to make a few game mechanics carry a lot of weight terms of gameplay.
Ethan Wilde: that's great how did you come upon the theme for cambria when when you.
Ethan Wilde: started working on that title.
Eric Vogel: um well, so a couple of things, one is that.
Eric Vogel: I created the mechanics before I settled on a theme which is how I typically do it as long as i'm working on spec as long as i'm not doing a game on Commission.
Eric Vogel: And I knew that this was a game about.
Eric Vogel: Trying to surround nodes in a network, essentially in order to claim victory points off the nodes.
Eric Vogel: And so that naturally suggested to me, it should be a game about siege warfare, and so I went looking for a place in time in history, where I could.
Eric Vogel: Talk about a large scale siege to a bunch of forts that were connected by a bunch of roads and so well roads make you think of Rome right away.
Eric Vogel: In the ancient world, the only people in the ancient world really had the roads, the classical world worth mentioning only road builders worth mentioning, and so I hunted around my research until I came up with this period in.
Eric Vogel: kind of late Roman.
Eric Vogel: Late Roman Empire, called the barbarian conspiracy when.
Eric Vogel: barbarians quote unquote in Scotland and Ireland somehow coordinated to attack simultaneously.
Eric Vogel: Roman Britain at two different points and kind of overtax the legions who are defending it.
Eric Vogel: So that was how I arrived at the theme for cambria The other thing is that my mother had always made a big deal out of her Welsh heritage, so it.
Eric Vogel: excited her no hints have a game set in a whale so though you're looking at the Cumbria side of the map, instead of the cambria side of the map here so.
Ethan Wilde: fascinating so you had the mechanics developed and then you went into a process of doing historical research to connect it back to a theme that you found in history, really, it sounds like.
Eric Vogel: Right, you know game designers are.
Eric Vogel: Different game designers work differently in that way, I think i'm one of the ones who starts with the mechanics and works towards the theme, the mechanic is kind of the most important thing to me, I want to find.
Eric Vogel: A theme that fits the mechanic well I don't want to just arbitrarily put a theme on it, and once the theme is in place for games that are a little more complicated than this one all starts.
Eric Vogel: Adding mechanics or changing mechanics to then fit that theme better in the case of this game actually.
Eric Vogel: There was that addition, if you see that pawn there that pawn represents the last Roman legion who's running around trying to defend the forts from the players, so that was a mechanic that got added after the theme was in place.
Ethan Wilde: fascinating can you talk a little bit about how you come to evolve, the design of a game through through play testing or other means.
Eric Vogel: sure.
Eric Vogel: So.
Eric Vogel: There are a few factors that cause a game to evolve, one of them, of course, is play testing.
Eric Vogel: You need to test the idea till it works.
Eric Vogel: You really you have a limited ability to get the game working before you start doing trial and error play testing with people, although I say that, generally, what you want to do is you've worked out a kind of scheme or economy for the game where you have an understanding of.
Eric Vogel: It depends on the game, but if it's a game where you had cards with assets on the cards and players were buying the cards.
Eric Vogel: Then or drafting them or something, then you come up with an economy where you had an understanding of each kind of asset, a card could give you what it was worth relative to another one or relative to a point of cost, you have.
Eric Vogel: some kind of system that way, and then is your play testing you're not play testing individual features of the game like whether it given card works or not you're testing whether your system works or not.
Eric Vogel: Otherwise, your play testing would take forever, but also play test for the most part, when i'm play testing um it's, not that I don't care about the play testers opinions or what to say but that's not the main thing, so I never, for example, have.
Eric Vogel: Remote groups of play testers test the game and send me back a report on what they thought that would be useful if I was a publisher trying to decide whether I wanted to publish a game or not.
Eric Vogel: But it's not useful to me as a designer I have to see how people are playing.
Eric Vogel: Because to understand their feedback, I have to understand it, in light of my observations of how they were playing the game in particular things like where they playing well or poorly where they missing opportunities that doesn't invalidate their feedback necessarily but it.
Eric Vogel: contextualize it fairly importantly.
Eric Vogel: But there's also been a few cases where play testers actually came up with an idea for a game a subtle modification to the mechanic or they made a comment that just sort of sparked an idea for mechanic in my mind as well, so they can have directed, but that way.
Eric Vogel: But the other thing that makes games evolve a lot is publishers.
Eric Vogel: So that wasn't really the case with.
Eric Vogel: Korea so much unless you count the demands of self publication.
Eric Vogel: My next game hi Bernie it was kind of the same thing I self published a small addition I had scaled the game quite far down to be able to make it affordable for me to do as a self publisher and then the publisher liked that aspect and took it on.
Eric Vogel: But.
Eric Vogel: If we look at, then the next game I publish so the the publisher for those two games unfortunately went out of business, I was kind of without a publisher for a while.
Eric Vogel: I eventually started working quite a bit with this company evil hat productions and for the most part, people have productions I didn't design games on spec and pitch the games.
Eric Vogel: To them, they Commission games, they said, we want a board game about this or that, in fact, in this case, they had commissioned a game from somebody else and got to a very advanced state where they created all the art for it.
Eric Vogel: and other things, and then decided the game wasn't working well and that designer didn't have time to work on it, so they asked me to try to fix the design and I tried for a while and said, you know I don't think I can really.
Eric Vogel: You know I can't fix another person's architecture, essentially, but if you give me a free hand I can design a new game that uses all the artwork URL.
Eric Vogel: which was its own interesting design challenge, but after that I did a couple of games with them that were also on Commission working with the first two were.
Eric Vogel: themed around there primarily a role playing game company, I should say so Zeppelin attack and don't turn your back were shared a theme with established role playing lines that they had already created established product lines.
Eric Vogel: But.
Eric Vogel: To say you back to your original question, the other big force that really makes games evolve as publishers and publishers influence and not necessarily just the publishers who ultimately publish the game because.
Eric Vogel: The game will get maybe considered in a lengthy way by a particular publisher for a while, who has some input on make some changes to try to please them and they don't ultimately publish it or.
Eric Vogel: The game gets put under contract and then the publisher goes out of business, or they downsize they can't afford to do it.
Eric Vogel: So I still made mechanical changes there's a game design of mind it's not published yet i'm still shopping around, but it was with a publisher for a good three years and I think he.
Eric Vogel: Just by saying Oh, it needs a little something more again and again he got me to make something like five distinct versions of it and.
Eric Vogel: Then said Oh, you know what it's grown too big, I can't afford to publish it anymore it's like well it wasn't that big when you started giving feedback on it, I guess, it is now.
Eric Vogel: And now i've created an entirely new version of it that doesn't even resemble all of those versions, I worked on for him, but that's kind of shows you how publishers, so in this case, actually, I had this was a game, the one game I co designed with my.
Eric Vogel: friend Chris was yarrow.
Eric Vogel: So this was originally themed around the San Francisco earthquake, it was originally themed around.
Eric Vogel: Rebuilding San Francisco after the San Francisco earthquake, because I needed a theme that had to do with Why would you have a why, would you be dealing with building businesses that get destroyed during the game that you have to rebuild.
Eric Vogel: But the theme didn't work perfectly, and it also wasn't a theme that was a good fit for evil hats over as a publisher they're very much based around more fantastical kinds of games, you could say traditionally geeky sorts of themes.
Eric Vogel: and
Eric Vogel: They were enthusiastic about the design, when I pitched it to them for the third game to do with them, but they didn't like the theme, and one of them just spitball the idea of making a big theme, and so the guide us would be stomping on your buildings, as you were building them.
Eric Vogel: But although they go with that kind of opening you know idea, the big picture idea generally the publisher lets me work out a lot of the details of the gaming when they do make that change I just realized actually left the game how.
Eric Vogel: Our point one of my games to talk about but that's alright.
Eric Vogel: So, so they worked out a deal will be tied to something on things, and the publisher was a big fan of the movie Pacific rim.
Eric Vogel: And so really saw the game is sort of a comedic Pacific Rim but i'm a big fan of classic godzilla movie so I saw it much more as godzilla movies, and so the gaming ended up being quite this push pull between the two.
Eric Vogel: or see this is of course my big hit the Dresden files.
Eric Vogel: Which is a big hit large measure, because of the Dresden files novels are such a big and i'm not even trying to take all the credit for it, but certainly my best selling board game, and the last one I did with evil hat.
Eric Vogel: But uh back to the question of publisher influencing the shape of the game Qatar, is a good example of that so, as is the subsequent game first empires, the ones that that's coming out in March.
Eric Vogel: So.
Eric Vogel: When I was working with the company that made cambrian hibernia I had developed a game to be a follow up to those two that would fit in the same box, it was originally going to be called Iberia.
Eric Vogel: And it was part of a Celtic nations theory series, I was doing would be in the Celtic Iberian Peninsula.
Eric Vogel: and fortunately that publisher went out of business, so I started trying to shop that came to new publishers I pitched it to a publisher who was interested in it.
Eric Vogel: But ultimately past, and I said, well, what if I changed it from a card mechanic to a dice mechanic, would you be more interested in it dice heroes were very hip at the time.
Eric Vogel: And they said yeah that might make us more interested in it, so I went developed the game that eventually turned into first empires by converting the card mechanic and that came to a dice mechanic and, as I continued to work on it that they ultimately didn't.
Eric Vogel: publish the game it went to a different publisher for a while we had some input about what they wanted into it, that changed at some at some mechanics and then, finally, it came to sandcastle the folks who did publish it and they had made changes to.
Eric Vogel: The theme of changed when I changed the mechanic but they've made yet more changes to the theme.
Eric Vogel: There were some mechanics in the original version of first empires that they didn't like ended up modifying those creating new replacement mechanics.
Eric Vogel: to please them so that game evolved that way, but it evolved so much that the original design in the card based design seemed to me like it was an.
Eric Vogel: entirely different game at that point, so I went back to it and started adding more mechanics to it to make it even more different from first empires, and so I added.
Eric Vogel: different kinds of pieces you weren't just playing with one kind of game pieces, but each player had three different types of units.
Eric Vogel: And made some other changes to it and that ended up becoming kotara so basically publisher feedback was powerful enough in terms of influencing evolution that it made one game branch off.
Eric Vogel: to become quite two games that have one or two minor mechanics in common, but really they're very different they're both what could call Dudes on a map game with fighting.
Eric Vogel: But one is card based one is dice based one has three kinds of units.
Eric Vogel: Different movement system, the other has.
Eric Vogel: Well, let me see here, let me this is a good time to stop sharing my screen.
Eric Vogel: Because I can show you we can maybe.
Eric Vogel: pop me up on me see i'm probably seeing my own view and not your view here.
Eric Vogel: I took my camera down like this a bit, and you can see first empires and all its glory now and i'm very pleased, I have to say with the job they did on this production really looks nice but.
Eric Vogel: wow instead of that card display with giving you icons there these ah, oh dear player boards, with the little.
Eric Vogel: markers that you move up the tracks, as you advance your empires abilities.
Eric Vogel: So that's just a.
Eric Vogel: Still, my game all the floor I deal with it later.
Eric Vogel: Anyway, that's just by way of giving you a little rundown of how game evolution kind of works in practice it's games aren't like.
Eric Vogel: they're not like paintings or novels were one there the soul creations of one person and they're not quite like films where they're really the creation of a team, there are things that are sort of primarily my creation, but.
Eric Vogel: A lot of people have influence on them play testers publishers my agent all those folks will have some influence in shaping the game.
Ethan Wilde: i'm glad you you brought that back around to to the players who participate in the process with you it's really interesting to hear about the publishers and the relationships that you've established with them.
Ethan Wilde: Can you say something about how you establish those relationships with publishers and and you mentioned an agent to that sounds interesting.
Eric Vogel: Sure, well, first of all, let me say that board game agents are not at all common in the board game world, in fact, I think I have the only board.
Eric Vogel: There, although I am not as only client.
Eric Vogel: that's a guy Tom version on who runs the forge next agency and France.
Eric Vogel: There might be somebody else doing it now, but i'm not aware of it, and so he works somewhat like a literary agent he represents my game designs to publishers he does the pitch for me.
Eric Vogel: Which is great because i'm not i'm not great at pitching my games to publishers, I have to say I don't have a fabulous knack for it, historically, and as for how I get my connections with publishers there's a lot of luck involved in that a lot of good fortune.
Eric Vogel: You know I made good friends at my friendly local game store, which sadly no longer around and game, and it was actually.
Eric Vogel: People who worked at endgame who put me in contact with my first publisher my first game publisher and.
Eric Vogel: Who, it was actually one of the staff at end game, who originally DEMO cambrian hibernia for that publisher and got them interested in making it when they had been that info interested if i'd been the one pitching it or would it have ever come on their radar it's hard to say.
Eric Vogel: But it goes to show you know make make friends at your friendly local game store you'll never know, to get out of it or just in general it's.
Eric Vogel: it's important people talk about it is networking what I would say is it's important to make friends and be somebody who's worth being friends with is really what it would come down to.
Eric Vogel: Networking kind of sounds more like you're just schmoozing and making contacts with people.
Eric Vogel: Which doesn't really necessarily get you anywhere, because then that person you're just sort of schmoozing with will say Oh well, if there's something in it, for me, maybe i'll do something for you, if.
Eric Vogel: You get people to like you, then they say Oh, I could you know eric's a great guy yeah i'll do i'll do this for you know that's kind of how it's worked out for me in other cases.
Eric Vogel: But there are other ways in which I promoted myself successfully when I was self publishing hibernia and cambria I just on a whim, a asked.
Eric Vogel: reached out to some reviewers and I asked Bruno Phi duty who's a very prominent game designer has been since the 90s.
Eric Vogel: I believe, since the 90s, maybe it's longer than that he's been a fixture in the field forever and he used to want, and one of the main board game.
Eric Vogel: websites which was called unified duties ideal game library, so he used to do a lot more reviewing.
Eric Vogel: And I said, would you be interested in seeing these games from me and he said, well, I won't promise to to write anything about the mature, you can send them to me.
Eric Vogel: And he ended up liking Hibernian writing about it that kind of also helped get me that initial contract.
Eric Vogel: And you know I kept sending in my games over the years, and he wasn't necessarily as interested in them and then I created a game that was really kind of right up his alley called Romans go home.
Eric Vogel: And he wrote about that, and when Bruno talks people listen, I immediately had offers from a couple of publishers, in that case, and they were publishers in France, who I would never have you know run into ordinarily.
Eric Vogel: And in fact we know, had a lot to do with me getting my agent because he eventually I got to meet him in person, when he came over to a convention, the United States, and he was nice enough to invite me to his ludo pathak gathering, which is this.
Eric Vogel: kind of smallish about 200 people game convention that he puts on by himself in the French countryside that's mostly.
Eric Vogel: Publishers and game artists game designers and people connected with the game, industry and that's where I met my agent who since got me a couple of very nice game contracts so.
Ethan Wilde: Welcome fascinating story really it sounds like a community of shared interests with a lot of passionate people and it sounds like you.
Ethan Wilde: really made connections to people that were interested in the shared ideas that you had similar ideas passions with what you're doing.
Eric Vogel: i'm yes i'm always a little suspicious of the word passion it's.
Eric Vogel: Just a little too popular.
Ethan Wilde: yeah sounds like you hit bruno's interest on on the head with Romans go home.
Eric Vogel: Yes, he.
Eric Vogel: did, and I should know that Bruno is also just.
Eric Vogel: A very generous person who I think probably mentors quite a few budding game designers here and there, and so he I mean he lives in France and I live here we don't see a lot of each other and we don't correspond all the time.
Eric Vogel: But there have been times when I you know I need an answer about how do you, you know which of these two public you know i've got these two publishers like which one Should I be thinking about or you know some other question like that and he'll.
Eric Vogel: he'll give me good information about that, but you know that again the the people who worked at end game have you know early on, gave me a lot of guidance about things in the industry.
Eric Vogel: My friend Shannon apple client.
Eric Vogel: Who was one of my main play testers he's also for a long time was a game reviewer he's worked in the role playing industry and a lot of ways he's to run.
Eric Vogel: An online role playing site called rpg net that you might have heard of and he and he wrote this beautiful history of the role playing industry called designers and dragons that I really recommend to anybody who's interested in role playing games.
Eric Vogel: But he also was able to you know, give me a lot of advice, not just about.
Eric Vogel: game design, but advice about dealing with things in the industry so again it's it's good to make friends, you know it's um.
Eric Vogel: You call it a shared passion, or you could just call it a shared a hobby really is shared hobby that grew out of its normal space.
Ethan Wilde: Normal space absolutely can you say a little bit more about the relationships, you have with some of your collaborators i'm looking over your shoulder still.
Ethan Wilde: At the mesmerizing art of first empires there's some extraordinary visuals there and the composition of that progress board that you showed us with the tokens really fascinating design details.
Eric Vogel: It is here, let me pull some cubes off, so I don't send them flying.
Eric Vogel: But in terms of the art, if you look.
Eric Vogel: Oh wow here can see if you see that elaborate texture ring.
Eric Vogel: Yes, this is JEREMY flurries art and i'm you know, most of the time I don't have a lot of direct interaction with the game artists, because their interaction is with the publisher.
Eric Vogel: Which is not to say I don't get to have any influence on the art, because often I do, but I don't have sit Downs with the artists, sometimes depending on where the publisher is I don't.
Eric Vogel: Even share a common language with the artist, so we couldn't have a conversation if we tried I don't have any French to speak of.
Eric Vogel: also see some of the detailing amaze This is something you don't see For those of you who are.
Eric Vogel: In the audience, who are maybe more video gamers and less board gamers this kind of component isn't something I think i've ever seen in a board game before.
Eric Vogel: The these little beautiful boxes just a hall hold all of your player components for just this beautiful insert and even each of these little wooden pieces is a slightly different design, like this one has this kind of headdress.
Eric Vogel: piece where.
Eric Vogel: This one has.
Eric Vogel: A little crusted helmet if you can see that.
Eric Vogel: I may be small.
Eric Vogel: And that's not simply I mean it is a static and it does, please people because they feel like they have their own pieces but it's also to make the game friendly for players who have impairments to color vision and.
Eric Vogel: can't actually see the green from the Red it can see some more of that Nice sort of.
Eric Vogel: texture and he made that in a lot of the art pieces just kind of it's in the background, you can't really see it, but it really.
Eric Vogel: It feeds into the impression people get of it, the game, even if it's somewhat unconsciously um so i've been fortunate in that i've had really lovely artwork in my games, except for the few times when i've tried to do it myself.
Eric Vogel: The but that's I would say that's probably the main person that the two people who have the most influence on the game, aside from me would typically be the artist and the graphic designer.
Eric Vogel: who sometimes will be the same person, but usually not.
Eric Vogel: The artist creates the actual art assets so they'll create things like the you know the painting of the figures and they'll create these textures that you see.
Eric Vogel: And the graphic designer will come up with you know this round shape and the you know the the shape of the logo the graphic designer will come out with a.
Eric Vogel: Big out one of the game cards here.
Eric Vogel: The graphic designer will determine how the information is laid out on the card to create you know both to balance the aesthetics, and the functionality essentially so.
Eric Vogel: You know the artist is always the one arguing to.
Eric Vogel: Make the aesthetics front and Center they the game designers is always hammering know this has to be functional and the graphic designers sort of trying to split the difference.
Eric Vogel: between the two.
Ethan Wilde: Do you find yourself playing the role of a producer if we think about other kind of team based creative arts like film or.
Ethan Wilde: Video games again, for example, how does the coordination.
Ethan Wilde: of you and other two roles.
Ethan Wilde: Get facilitated.
Eric Vogel: So I don't know how it is make an analogy with the video game world because I don't know enough about kind of the team structure, but I did used to work in film, so I can make a pretty good set of film analogies I would say that I was kind of comparable to.
Eric Vogel: As if I were the if i'm sort of the writer, the director and the editor of the game so game designer would be sort of equivalent of all those things.
Eric Vogel: The publisher is pretty much the executive producer, I would say there they kind of make the big picture decisions they green like things.
Eric Vogel: Now, at a publisher a small publisher there might just be one person at the publisher.
Eric Vogel: board games companies can be that small and i've worked before can companies that small.
Eric Vogel: or medium sized publishers there will probably be a project manager of some kind, on the board game and the project manager is more like the.
Eric Vogel: term like the line producer, the person who's handling the day to day details of the production who's who's green lighting smaller decisions.
Eric Vogel: The.
Eric Vogel: game artist would be more like the cinematographer I guess you would say, and in some ways, I guess the.
Eric Vogel: In another way of looking at, you could say the graphic designer is sort of like a combination of the well you I guess the game artist would be some combination of set designer costumer and cinematographer.
Eric Vogel: And that the graphic designer is also sort of like a cinematographer and sort of like an editor it doesn't really find out that this, to say the.
Eric Vogel: The raw material of the images is being created by the artist, but a lot of the framing of the images really being done by the graphic.
Eric Vogel: designer so in some ways they're more like the person who's setting up the shops, even though a lot of what you think of is the photography is kind of done by that i've tortured this movie metaphor enough now, I suppose, but.
Ethan Wilde: lined up pretty well actually pretty well.
Eric Vogel: But you know, unlike a.
Eric Vogel: movie where the people working in the movie are, by necessity in the same room working together a lot of the time.
Eric Vogel: that's generally not the case with the board game design like first of all, most of my unless i'm working on Commission generally most of my work is done before the rest of the team is even present before there's even a contract for the game and.
Eric Vogel: The.
Eric Vogel: The artist.
Eric Vogel: will see the game, but, and you know, the way the publisher will will will relate the game to the artist can be very different sometimes they might give them some kind of style book or something like that.
Eric Vogel: The artist often does research on the theme, independent of my research on the theme so and then at other times there are.
Eric Vogel: in Qatar.
Eric Vogel: One of the sets of pieces ended up being these little cheetah centaurs these kind of.
Eric Vogel: Center figures that are half human half cheetah.
Eric Vogel: And I think the way those ended up in the game was just because my prototype which had a different theme.
Eric Vogel: Had these camel pieces for one of the sets of pieces and the only reason they were camels.
Eric Vogel: Was that those were the only meatballs I had around at the time to use for it, I needed three sets of meet different kinds of peoples in the same color and I have those candles so I use them.
Eric Vogel: But I think it kind of just got him thinking oh one of these pieces is an animal essentially and so.
Eric Vogel: When he kind of influence in the shape of the game.
Ethan Wilde: brilliant so with first empires, is that a spec or Commission project.
Eric Vogel: It is a spec project and the.
Eric Vogel: publisher change the theme substantially well they they medium change the theme.
Eric Vogel: They it was originally set in a map of the Mediterranean world they felt like that had been overused and board games and it has been used quite a bit.
Eric Vogel: And wanted it to be on a world map instead, but then kind of left the details up to me of what kind of a theme would make it work on a world map, which is how we came up with the alternate history saving our it's called you crony in French in the genre of.
Eric Vogel: Essentially, a historical novel that uses a fictional alternate timeline.
Eric Vogel: And that's actually one of my favorite literary genre is I love.
Eric Vogel: novels like handles children they're setting that kind of alternate history timeline, but in this case wouldn't let me do was.
Eric Vogel: Put the empire's on the world map, where I needed them to be instead of having.
Eric Vogel: A you know, a whole world map, but the you know all the powers kind of clustered in the old world things like that it, let me use the space.
Eric Vogel: The way I wanted to by taking actual for the most part, actual empires from history but taking empires that maybe hadn't been so prominent or early civilizations that hadn't been so prominent in.
Eric Vogel: Actual history and creating an alternate timeline were those were the big civilizations history, so that was sort of how we arrived at the theme of first empires.
Ethan Wilde: brilliant brilliant.
Eric Vogel: that's often the way it works is the publisher says no, I want this big picture thing in the theme, but then they let me work out kind of the details of how that big picture is going to be implemented.
Ethan Wilde: amazing that is.
Ethan Wilde: Really illuminating thanks for sharing that with us Eric so so you had the idea for for the mechanics of this game.
Ethan Wilde: When you started to collaborate with the publisher it sounds like.
Eric Vogel: Yes, it so it was a fully working prototype.
Eric Vogel: and
Eric Vogel: You know I don't pitch anything to a publisher before I feel quite good about it.
Eric Vogel: But the, but of course it will still change, you know that's kind of the pain of it is you get to the point where you think it's perfect and then they want to change something.
Eric Vogel: But I was pretty happy with the changes ultimately.
Eric Vogel: Sometimes it takes me a little while to accept Yes, this is probably a good change, but in fact I do think the change the feedback, they have in the game was quite good.
Eric Vogel: And it's part of why I don't really want to.
Eric Vogel: There are some game designers from some quite prominent ones who just self publish more or less they become a publisher game designer partly because there's not enough money in game designing.
Eric Vogel: For most people to make a living at it and it's a little easier to do that if they are both a publisher and a designer.
Eric Vogel: In fact, the most prominent one I can think of, I would say Ryan lyrica is a publisher artists designer so since he's getting all the work for being the artist the designer and the publisher he makes a living at it more easily.
Eric Vogel: But part of why I don't want to do that is that I think.
Eric Vogel: I don't think the Games are going to be a strong of absolutely everything comes from me and nobody other than my play technion nobody with kind of authority can come in and say you should really change this.
Eric Vogel: I think there's a lot of kind of art, you see where the, for whatever reason, the artist gets sort of powerful enough to call out to the all the shots and they start making bad decisions.
Ethan Wilde: Definitely some examples that video game history.
Ethan Wilde: So a lot of it sounds like the the creative control, you have is is in the mechanics it's in the design of the gameplay.
Ethan Wilde: And it sounds like you get a lot of freedom to to develop that aspect of the game, even with all these other players involved.
Ethan Wilde: Are other aspects of that part of the design process of choosing the mechanics and in crafting the gameplay that you particularly enjoy or or a way that you approach, working with this toolkit of different kinds of game mechanics.
um.
Eric Vogel: I don't really think of it as a tool kit.
Eric Vogel: I don't think of it as a sort of like.
Eric Vogel: You know their colors and there are only so many and in the world, you know and so i'm taking some from this to something that to.
Eric Vogel: Generally, the game I the real game idea is an idea for a mechanic that feels new ish to me um they're they're sort of degrees of newness mechanically So if you look at a game like dominion when it came along, or.
Eric Vogel: what's the first worker placement game, I guess it's kayla's I think it's probably careless.
Eric Vogel: That introduces what you might consider the equivalent of a basic patent this really fundamentally new kind of mechanic like deck building or worker placement that inspires a whole bunch of subsequent games using that kind of mechanic.
Eric Vogel: I don't think.
Eric Vogel: I don't think i've really created a.
Eric Vogel: Basic mechanic that that way some something that's that.
Eric Vogel: But kind of the next tier down in terms of originality is finding a really different variant of one of those established mechanics and I feel like.
Eric Vogel: i've done that, with almost all of my games if I don't come up with, there are a couple of my games that are maybe just original in the sense of.
Eric Vogel: it's a combination of elements that have never been in quite that combination before but that's less satisfying to me, or they have very minor or the mechanic has changed in a very minor way.
Eric Vogel: But to me what satisfying is i've got an idea for a mechanic that seems really new and interesting to me.
Eric Vogel: And a build the game around that generally you won't you won't build me a game around all new mechanics the core mechanic mechanic that really drives the game is really original.
Eric Vogel: And then, it has a bunch of quite familiar mechanics around it, that generally works better for people in terms of learning the game.
Eric Vogel: That it's not you know 20 new mechanics in the game.
Ethan Wilde: that's fascinating it looks like you have.
Ethan Wilde: Also, a very sophisticated approach to the game economies i'm looking at those.
Ethan Wilde: board boards again that are over your shoulder for first empires there's like five different columns illuminating different.
Ethan Wilde: Aspects of empires progress How does that work in this game.
Eric Vogel: Well, one of the things that.
Eric Vogel: is interesting about this game I don't know if we'll be able to see it just with me holding the two boards up.
Eric Vogel: But these boards aren't identical either, if you look at the bottom row you'll see that each board kind of starts off with the strength that's.
Eric Vogel: The value of stronger than average and, in some cases, the board start with, and then, as they move up you'll see that the so over here on the.
Eric Vogel: left of each scale you see the attribute it's giving you as you push your cube of the game asset that's increasing, on the other side you see the victory points that you're getting from moving that up.
Eric Vogel: So what you'll see is these boards have the same victory point scoring scales, but a given scale isn't on the same color for each board.
Eric Vogel: So a symmetry is one of the trickier things to do in a in a game and get it right, because it can so easily destroy the balance of the game and just create systematic player advantage, especially when the asymmetry is in the game, from the very beginning i'm.
Eric Vogel: Sorry, I lost the thread of your question a little bit oh game economy so.
Eric Vogel: The trick of it in terms of design again it's figuring out what things in the game are worth essentially like what so in this case, I have to think of.
Eric Vogel: The different things that you can get from advancing a track, you can get to roll more dice each turn.
Eric Vogel: You can get two more attempts at reroll in your days to get what you want, you can get movement points on the board, you can get cards that allow you to.
Eric Vogel: score victory points or sometimes you can use them to change your dice to have more control and you get new game pieces I need to figure out what.
Eric Vogel: Each of these is worth relative to the other, to be able to balance this board properly so.
Eric Vogel: What I might do for a game like this in fact I think I did with this game, I start out with the assumption that all of these things are equivalent unless I see.
Eric Vogel: An obvious reason to think they're not and then as i'm testing it I start to think well if I make all these things equivalent.
Eric Vogel: Does the player who starts out with more of these do worse than the player starts out with more of these systematically and, of course, you have to play several times to see that yield.
Eric Vogel: um and one of the things that I found was that, yes, in fact, i'm more roles is not as good as more dice or more pieces or more movement, and so it has to be balanced accordingly.
Eric Vogel: So maybe i'll take and maybe I find movement is especially valuable in the game, so the player who starts off with the strength and movement, maybe i'll also start them out with a weakness and something.
Eric Vogel: So, over time, sometimes that lets you actually make the asymmetry more varied which players seem to like that something appeals to something in them that.
Eric Vogel: there's a pattern there that's a little more complex than they can easily discern just by looking at it.
Eric Vogel: And sometimes it forces you to minimize or eliminate the asymmetry he just said, you know, sometimes you discovered this game will work with a symmetry in it it's going to be inherently unbalanced.
Eric Vogel: Variable player powers, the same kind of thing if you if players start out with fundamentally different abilities balancing that it's going to be quite challenging and so it's something.
Eric Vogel: gamers think they level, who I always want to have that I want to have a symmetry I want to have variable player powers, I like that game until they play it and they don't they say well this game is balanced, the schemes terrible.
Eric Vogel: Their gamers are very kind of demanding audience.
Ethan Wilde: Indeed, indeed it, it sounds like.
Ethan Wilde: This the art of balancing the dynamics for the different players is really critical to having success is that done mostly through play testing, or do you have other means for trying to develop the balance and some of these things.
Eric Vogel: it's math followed by play testing, and I say mass it's generally very simple math it's not.
Eric Vogel: Something it's probably the most complicated math I ever have to do for a game is maybe calculating an average rate of something um.
Eric Vogel: And mostly it's just a lot of addition really that i'm doing but.
Eric Vogel: You start out by trying to map out the balance again you have a formula for the equivalence of things of a point system so i'm sure that the.
Eric Vogel: designer of dominion say Donald decks has got somewhere a game Bible where he's got illustrated, you know what is a card draw worth compared to a coin or a victory point or whatever else.
Eric Vogel: So a lot of is about working that system out and testing i've watched game designers who don't do that tried to design a complicated game and it just it really goes South but they're also game designers out there, whose philosophy as well, I just don't care about Cain balance.
Eric Vogel: And I don't play a lot of their games.
Eric Vogel: they'll they'll say yeah let's just we just want a lot of craziness swings and the game and there's a kind of gamer who find that game really exciting and doesn't mind to that it's.
Eric Vogel: Mostly luck, whether they win or lose and and not so much their own efforts, or they or they feel like the game has so much simulation value.
Eric Vogel: That will get them very excited if you look at old school hex encounter war games they go to a lot of trouble to simulate.
Eric Vogel: Real world conditions, but they do it with lots of tables and lots of randomized on top of randomized years, so it doesn't necessarily make the game super skill based.
Ethan Wilde: yeah that's interesting i'm glad you use that word just now skill, as you were describing all of this around balance and the philosophy different designers I started to think about that.
Ethan Wilde: Access between chance and skill and do you find that that you try to design most of your games to allow players to develop skills to develop strategies.
Eric Vogel: It varies from game to game, but what i'd say is.
Eric Vogel: You know I think most gamers as we get into this kind of game, as they get into hobby games euro games things they go through a phase where they think oh.
Eric Vogel: randomness in games is bad I don't like randomness um you know, maybe they start out as a kid playing games that are highly random and they like randomness then they start saying no game should all be very non random you know I should absolutely succeed or fail just do my own efforts.
Eric Vogel: But games can really fail, by having to little randomness to.
Eric Vogel: and actually chess is an example of that chest played at the Grand Master level.
Eric Vogel: The player who moves first has a tremendous advantage over the player who moves second essentially white has tremendous advantage over black it's got if we're looking at it as a game, I was designing I would say, well, this game has too much start player it's broken.
Eric Vogel: They and, of course, in chess They fix that by just you know reversing the positions and playing again, but that problem is a result of the fact that there aren't any random factors in chess it's the fact that.
Eric Vogel: It is a game of two players waiting for the other, to make a mistake, you know.
Eric Vogel: And that's most.
Eric Vogel: board games don't have as many options as many considerations as as much thinking out that many steps ahead as high level chess players do most.
Eric Vogel: You know, you can only do that kind of thinking in a game when you've played it vast number of times and most board games don't get played you know I play a lot of different games I don't play the same game, every day, so I wouldn't ever get to that point where the game.
Eric Vogel: So the not a game that doesn't have enough randomness tends to come down to this kind of stale maybe thing where again these two players are just kind of.
Eric Vogel: moving back and forth waiting for the other, to make a mistake and if nobody ever does, then it just devolved to being one by a player who has some kind of advantage, based on their position, whether its first player or the last player that it just defaults to that so.
Eric Vogel: The amount of randomness in a game is I hope i'm not going too far off your question.
Eric Vogel: The amount of randomness in the game is in some ways, needs to be proportional to the game's length and complexity, if you have.
Eric Vogel: A long, complex game it doesn't need to be terribly random because there are so many paths to go down that just the players choices effectively create the randomness over time they put random seats of the outcome, the the outcome of a given set of actions isn't totally predictable.
Eric Vogel: And, of course, if it's a long game you don't want it to be terribly random because people don't want to feel like I spent three hours playing something only to lose on a dime.
Eric Vogel: You know that's not very enjoyable, on the other hand, if a game is shorter as most of my games are then you need some randomized her is because.
Eric Vogel: If they weren't there, it would come down to being like tic TAC toe the same way you realize and that tic TAC toe is much better example the chest early on, you realize that if you understand tic TAC toe that the start player always wins tic TAC toe it's unavoidable.
Eric Vogel: And so, in a simple game, it will come down to that or even if it doesn't people will just spend so much time in what we call analysis paralysis just trying to think out there moves that it makes the game.
Eric Vogel: Not fun, so you want enough randomized there's that people only think out there moves till they're within the range of variants of the random visor in the game and then said Well now, I should just try my luck, like, I thought i've optimized my move X much, and now I should try my luck.
Ethan Wilde: that's fabulous unpacking of that it makes me think of this phrase.
Ethan Wilde: That comes up.
Ethan Wilde: In video game design, as well as this idea of making it easy to learn, but difficult to master the idea that somehow there's some compelling.
Ethan Wilde: For some motivation to play it again something that captivates you it's got repeat playability do you think thats related to this idea that that there needs to be some randomness and possibly also some skill.
Eric Vogel: yeah well, I mean there needs to be both there should always be you know, unless it's a very light very fast game.
Eric Vogel: There should always be some skill, you should always there should always be some learning curve, where you get better at the game, over time, although a game without much of that can still be fun.
Eric Vogel: The.
Eric Vogel: replay ability.
Eric Vogel: replay ability has become sort of a hobby horse with board game reviewers where they harp on it quite a bit, and the reason I think is because it's something.
Eric Vogel: Because of the way they go about evaluating so kind of the common idea is that what makes a game replaceable is if it has a lot of variable content.
Eric Vogel: So, probably the best early example of that might be settlers of katon which is probably the board game that you know, most people the modern board game that most people are familiar or recent forgive that most people are familiar with.
Eric Vogel: It you know the Board is made of a modular hex is that get randomly set up the chain that's supposed to change the make.
Eric Vogel: One game different from another and you put out the numbers on different spots so it's supposed to be a different game every time you play for that reason.
Eric Vogel: And that kind of content, whether it's a modular board or variable scoring conditions or alternate sets of cards, you can play with.
Eric Vogel: people look to that and say oh this game has replay ability, because has these elements that vary from game to game and sometimes I have those in my games and sometimes I don't but my point is.
Eric Vogel: modular content isn't what makes a game replaceable the enjoy ability of the game makes the game replaceable you can get you can have a lot of modular content in the game and get very tired of it before you've played even a fraction of that.
Eric Vogel: there's a game by designer I like quite well he's done to my favorite games free month freeze, but he designed to this game that's almost like a thought experiment in modular content called 504.
Eric Vogel: Where the rule book was a flip chart that was divided into three segments, so you could dial up.
Eric Vogel: A different set of three and have a different game, and there were 504 distinct game combinations so you could dial in a monetary economy or rail building or a combat and you can flip all these things well.
Eric Vogel: I played three of the Games, and I was done with five or four.
Eric Vogel: Because.
Eric Vogel: In order to do that he did sort of had to set up so that no one of the games of that 504 was really well balanced and optimal um.
Eric Vogel: So, whereas my favorite board game which is a game by Martin was called London.
Eric Vogel: doesn't at least the first edition, which is the addition I like doesn't really have any modular elements, but my friends and I have played that again and again and again and keep finding new strategies we keep finding new little pads to victory within it.
Eric Vogel: So I think the reason the reviewers like the modular content so much as they can say oh look.
Eric Vogel: They just played the game once and they said but looked as this this and that's clearly it's replaceable because they tried to make a career as video you know influencers they don't have time to play the game 20 times before they review it sometimes and we play once.
Eric Vogel: i've had some reviews, where I questioned whether they played it at all.
Eric Vogel: And then they want to you know, but they want to have things to say about it, that their audience will say oh yeah that's true you know I spot that So if you want to know whether a game is replaceable play it 20 times.
Eric Vogel: And the same gamer who says, is it you know, is this game replaceable really am I getting my money's worth.
Eric Vogel: i'll be like you know how many board games, do you buy a year oh I buy like 30 board games a year okay.
Eric Vogel: How, you know many times, do you play each of your games in a year when are you ever going to get up to that theoretical limit of.
Eric Vogel: Liability you know I.
Eric Vogel: I.
Eric Vogel: I keep my board game collection, although I buy new games at the time of down to about 200 because it's, all I can fit in my house and the ones i've kept for years i'm lucky if I get them on the team once a year, I mean that's the rotation I don't play games 360 this year so.
Ethan Wilde: I really appreciate you highlighting that that different approaches from the design perspective to try and make something have legs basically have a sustainable attraction for replay.
Ethan Wilde: That idea of modular content sounds like kind of a brute force way to approach that whereas your example with London sounds like it's in the nuance.
Ethan Wilde: Of the designer develop that you can find these different pathways of developing different strategies.
Eric Vogel: yeah.
Eric Vogel: yeah I mean.
Eric Vogel: Even a game like useful.
Eric Vogel: Which doesn't doesn't have modular content and it doesn't have a huge variety of ways to win.
Eric Vogel: I still think it's fun after playing it a bunch of times, or a game like third in Texas, where there's not a lot of variance.
Eric Vogel: You know not only they're not modular content really it's a limited path to victory, I understand them all pretty well.
Eric Vogel: it's still fun to go back and revisit those and I have a new experience just by playing it with new players who you know offer me a different kind of challenge than the players i'm used to playing it with.
Ethan Wilde: wow Dr vogel I want to, I want to thank you for going on this journey through your experience and sharing your thoughts a closing question before I turn things over to Benjamin for some audience questions and and that would be do you have any advice for ambitious game designers.
Eric Vogel: well.
Eric Vogel: let's see um.
Eric Vogel: advice about how to go about creating your games advice about how to go about getting them published, what are you.
Ethan Wilde: Well i'll let you pick the scope.
Ethan Wilde: of that.
Eric Vogel: yeah whatever you think is.
Ethan Wilde: The best to leave them with.
Eric Vogel: Well, when it comes to designing your games I think what I would say is first of all, just be prepared to design a lot of terrible games before you ever design a good one.
Eric Vogel: play a lot of board games play a great variety of board games start to kind of take in ideas by osmosis.
Eric Vogel: and
Eric Vogel: test your ideas quite a bit by yourself, before you inflict them on other people, because if you.
Eric Vogel: your friends will run out of patients, for your early efforts quickly, there was a guy who played one of my early.
Eric Vogel: Efforts to try and create a board game, and he had a lousy experience and wouldn't play test, one of my games again for years for years now, he loves my game, so I finally.
Eric Vogel: talked him into playing one of them after I got I guess you figured well he's been published now he must have done something okay.
Eric Vogel: That would be my design advice my.
Eric Vogel: You know, publishing advice I would say.
Eric Vogel: These days, probably the easiest way to start to move towards publication is to kick start something yourself on a small scale.
Eric Vogel: make a small game to do that with make something like a small single deck card game don't you know break the Bank, making this huge thing because that it's it's easy to get the finances of kickstarter wrong So if you make a small project you'll make your mistakes on a.
Eric Vogel: small scale.
Eric Vogel: And don't rush into doing it make sure you've tested that game with a lot of people who aren't your friends.
Eric Vogel: try to get some some input on it, I mean you can always go out and try to find a publisher but thing you know the ways that sort of unknown designers can try to pitch to publishers things like.
Eric Vogel: You know, conventions, they have a game to you know publisher speed dating.
Eric Vogel: Events I don't think they work very well you know publishers really can't tell anything about whether your games any good.
Eric Vogel: From those things, and they mostly I think go to them for public relations and not as a way to seriously try to find products so.
Eric Vogel: Look at publishing something yourself on a small scale, and you know if it draws the attention of a publisher if it gets some press some success.
Eric Vogel: Then, if you've done it on a small scale, a publisher wouldn't think twice about putting out a new edition of it, because you haven't killed the sales with your your small edition.
Eric Vogel: And if it doesn't take off, then you'll get to see something about how you like doing it, but.
Eric Vogel: keep in mind that the number of people who actually make a living as a board game designer is very small and i'm not among them i've had maybe.
Eric Vogel: One year of my career when I could have actually supported myself with my board game income it's a nice supplemental income for me and it's really a few people out there who've had.
Eric Vogel: Either one of the you know perennial successes like ticket to ride or or dominion that you know or pandemic that just you know get to quit their day job and just do that or people who've had really a string of.
Eric Vogel: Big hits like.
Eric Vogel: Anton bauza say you know who's done Seven Wonders and picabo and go stories and you know and and and you know all these designs that are big hits.
Ethan Wilde: wow great advice.
Ethan Wilde: Really inspirational story you shared with us.
Ethan Wilde: And I really want to thank you for taking the time with our group we've got a.
Ethan Wilde: looks about 20 minutes left on the clock i'm going to turn things over to my colleague Benjamin who's going to help to facilitate some audience q&a and again thanks so much Dr vogel for for being with us this evening.
Eric Vogel: thanks for having me it's a lot of fun great.
Benjamin Hammer: Thanks ethan, thank you for handing it over to me.
Benjamin Hammer: And Eric Thank you so much for Dr vogel Thank you so much for a great talk there.
Eric Vogel: it's called me.
Benjamin Hammer: All right, Eric so we'll start off, we have a couple of questions from the audience and i'll be keeping an eye on the chat here, to see if any more come in.
Benjamin Hammer: First off from Kathy it's a two parter and it sort of ties into your closing statement, there are there any classes that are recommended for pursuing a game design career.
Eric Vogel: For board game design career, I do know that there are I you know I would say that.
Eric Vogel: almost any kind of.
Eric Vogel: interests, you have there's some potential for it to be of some use to in board game application and, in general, i'm a fan of kind of cross pollination between.
Eric Vogel: Different art media or even between the sciences and art.
Eric Vogel: So my psychology.
Eric Vogel: chops don't really play a big role in my.
Eric Vogel: game design work because.
Eric Vogel: games are such they're kind of anti psychological in a way people by people like them is that they have none of the ambiguities that.
Eric Vogel: sort of most human activity does.
Benjamin Hammer: it's true true this.
Eric Vogel: is part of why board games as a hobby attract a lot of people who maybe have a little bit of social skills deficit that's kind of a thing gamers are a bit famous for but it's because.
Eric Vogel: You know I think people go into it and think well if i'm playing the board game by the rules, then i'm conducting myself correctly in this social interaction it's highly structured I can kind of deal with it.
Eric Vogel: But there are a few things in psychology like save the principle of loss aversion that you know definitely informs game design at time people's tendency to not calculate a potential gain or a potential loss of the same value is being equivalent.
Okay.
Eric Vogel: So.
Eric Vogel: You know I would say just take whatever classes you're interested in I don't know if they're board game design classes out there in the world, I also don't know how worthwhile it would be to take them if there were.
Eric Vogel: Some you know I took film classes, when I was an undergrad and they were kind of fun, but i'm making films and film classes, is absolutely nothing.
Eric Vogel: Like working in the film industry and doesn't really prepare you for it in any way and, more importantly, doesn't give you any kind of indicator about whether you like working in the film industry, which I also tried to do.
Benjamin Hammer: propecia film and television gotcha well I think that's a great answer for the first part of your question, there, I would also add to that there's great there's great courses that i've taken and that a couple of that i'm currently taking for digital game design.
Eric Vogel: or.
Benjamin Hammer: That, I think, would certainly crossover for board game design in some small amount, at least.
Benjamin Hammer: Well done.
Eric Vogel: Worse digital board game design is is in some ways that different breed of cat because it's a technical much more of a technical skill and board games.
Benjamin Hammer: Through yeah absolutely yeah.
Eric Vogel: And I think.
Eric Vogel: Education has a lot more value when you're learning, something that has some amount of specified technique, whether it's technical, in the sense of computer skills or technical, in the sense of.
Eric Vogel: The kind of things I teach my students about psychotherapy or psychological testing or qualitative research.
Eric Vogel: it's when you're teaching somebody to do something about which there's kind of no objective standard like a class in abstract painting say.
Benjamin Hammer: Oh got it that I that I think.
Eric Vogel: It I just don't see why taking a class is a good way to go about it, I feel kind of the same way about acting classes that i've also taken, so I think if you want to be an actor.
Eric Vogel: You should just go try to get acting jobs, as opposed to saying acting classes, it depends kind of activity you're talking about.
Benjamin Hammer: I think that's fair well for the second part of your question she says or she asks how does game design become a career path if it doesn't pay well and I think this ties back into you saying that the the the pay is not all that great for.
Benjamin Hammer: Right, especially board game design.
Eric Vogel: i'm not going to say it is a career path and depends what you mean by career it's.
Eric Vogel: For me, and I think for an awful lot of people in the game industry, it is a pursuit that's driven by enjoyment it's something you do more for the glory of it or the fun of the activity, I don't think you do it simply for the I don't do it just for the journey.
Eric Vogel: I don't do right joy, the activity.
Eric Vogel: I get excitement out of seeing my games played by people, you know that kind of experience of success that's not so tied to money i'm not a super money oriented person.
Benjamin Hammer: I love it yeah.
Eric Vogel: I mean, I like to eat.
Benjamin Hammer: yeah I think we all do right.
Eric Vogel: But you know the other thing, too, is that I have a.
Eric Vogel: When Robert graves was talking about writing novels and writing poetry, he said, I raised dogs in a kennel so I can afford to keep a cat.
Eric Vogel: In that you don't make any money off poetry, like the, the only professional poets in the world have jobs or aren't really professional poets their professional poetry professors essentially.
Eric Vogel: I saw.
Eric Vogel: I see and.
Eric Vogel: You know.
Eric Vogel: Through the question about but.
Benjamin Hammer: So I think what you're saying is is.
Benjamin Hammer: don't do this for the money do it for the love of gaming.
Eric Vogel: Right and, to be honest, even if there is money in an art form, I would say I don't know if you'll do a very good job of it if you're doing it for the money there's probably people who.
Eric Vogel: Did art exclusively for the money, whose work I would say, was pretty good out there, you probably can't make.
Eric Vogel: Altogether, a generalization about that, but but in, but if money is what you want there's always better ways to make it that in the art, so I don't you know I think generally people, even if they're looking to kind of make a living.
Eric Vogel: So for me, I think there are a lot of kinds of art out there, where it really is about.
Eric Vogel: You know, you need some kind of iron rice bowl to, so to speak, you need some kind of him, for me, you know that psychology I mean psychology isn't.
Eric Vogel: it's not working in a factory it's, it is also a career and I also have achievements through that.
Eric Vogel: But there's a certain kind of creative expression that I don't get through psychology even from things like writing that is more satisfying that, so I think you really have to kind of look at your own motivations, I have to say I went to.
Eric Vogel: Not to make assumptions about any anyone who's in attendance now who might be going to college in some kind of artistic pursuit, but I studied.
Eric Vogel: Film and theatre as an undergraduate and then I tried to work in the film industry, and when I look back on it, I didn't have very good motivations for doing that I think I was doing it because I thought the idea of.
Eric Vogel: Quote unquote real work sounded unbearable to me, I thought you know, making a living, you know I had to find a way to make a living doing something I really enjoyed right I didn't think I would be able to kind of.
Eric Vogel: tolerate life and I create much better art of one kind or another, since i've gotten over that feeling about it because i'm not doing art out of an anxiety as divo said.
Eric Vogel: Artists have traditionally been good looking young men and women who couldn't get a real job.
Eric Vogel: I once I got over that kind of anxiety about myself I think there's a lot more freed up to do better creative work so.
Benjamin Hammer: i'm not sure it's great, and I think that's.
Benjamin Hammer: Right, I think that's a feeling we can all certainly relate to the not necessarily wanting to do real work and and trying to find another path, but anything we do is going to take a hell of a lot of work, so we better just get used to it anyways.
Eric Vogel: movie time it'll basically is what it comes.
Eric Vogel: down to.
Eric Vogel: to fund your efforts, like.
Eric Vogel: You know all your artistic efforts I bet if you look at it held back by the fact that you can't afford this stuff you need to.
Benjamin Hammer: Totally yeah.
Eric Vogel: And of course you can't afford that hot.
Eric Vogel: You know workstation you need to actually do your graphics or whatever.
Benjamin Hammer: Right yeah yeah i'm experiencing that with a very old PC currently it's causing a lot of roadblocks in game development but.
Eric Vogel: where's the fucking do right now is awesome because I have.
Eric Vogel: I have a professor income to get it.
Benjamin Hammer: Right right alright so moving on to another question from Ben from the audience.
Benjamin Hammer: says, I like the idea of educational games, do you think your psychological games can fit in that category, do you have any good stories of your first game helping people or data of effectiveness.
Eric Vogel: Sure um I an outcome study has not been conducted on land assignment to this point, it might be a kind of tricky outcome study to actually do because you wouldn't look at an entire psychotherapy as revolving around nothing but.
Eric Vogel: One psychotherapy game, you know it would be one element in a child psychotherapy and evaluating psycho therapeutic outcomes and children can be challenging.
Eric Vogel: In general, so it would be a tricky study and, since it would be children would be a tricky outcome study to do ethically as well, so I can't say I have data I definitely hear lots of anecdotes from because the game is.
Eric Vogel: Quite widely used out there in the field and every copy that was ever created is still floating around there's even a Spanish language edition of the game now we're has been for about 10 years so it's got quite a bit of you, so I definitely have you know I.
Eric Vogel: I can't share you an anecdote of it, helping people, because the anecdotes are part of psychotherapeutic practice and they're not something that i've shared before.
Eric Vogel: But I definitely your stories of working for kids and therapists sometimes using it in slightly different ways than I originally envisioned things like that, and I also.
Eric Vogel: use it to teach something about thought restrict cognitive restructuring and cognitive distortions to my own students to fun way to kind of introduce them to that concept.
Eric Vogel: The sorry, there was an earlier part of the question that i'm forgetting see if I see it over there.
Benjamin Hammer: Ben just stated that he likes the idea of educational.
Benjamin Hammer: games and he was wondering if any of your psychological games fit into that category.
Eric Vogel: So I would say that psychology games and educational Games are a bit different they're similar in the sense that they tend to be.
Eric Vogel: You know fairly simple fairly familiar forms of gameplay they're not very normal you know they use the kind of mechanics you see in games like candy land, for example, and most of the therapeutic content is kind of there on the cards in some way in one form or another.
Eric Vogel: But there's a little bit of a difference between a second therapeutic came in an educational game, so if you go to a teacher supply store, for example, you'll see a bunch of straight up educational games they're there just to get kids information about us history or whatever it's about.
Eric Vogel: But they're not necessarily there to develop thinking skills that would at least i'm not familiar with any educational games that are there to do that.
Eric Vogel: While they're not very familiar anymore, there is something called simulation games, not the same kind of thing that we've been talking about in the hobby game industry is being simulations that they're the kind of thing that HR professionals.
Eric Vogel: might do to get people to explore things like workplace bias ease or power dynamics i've got a copy of one called star power i've never tried to use it, but there's a few things like that that are maybe more like therapy games, but there are big games are.
Eric Vogel: They play other roles they can a game, like the talking feeling doing game is also very exploratory it gives it reveals a lot of information about the client to the therapist is there, playing it or can.
Eric Vogel: As well as facilitating kind of relationship between the two so.
Eric Vogel: So again, like the talking feeling doing game doesn't really have an educational function at all, a game like land assignments it's cognitive therapy and psychodynamic therapy does have a didactic function, you are teaching certain kinds of information, but it also has this process function.
Eric Vogel: It also has a skill development function so there's more to it than it doesn't neatly fit the bracket of educational game, I would say.
Benjamin Hammer: Okay yeah I think that's super thorough super thorough answer to that question yeah.
Eric Vogel: I am a professor so.
That helps.
Benjamin Hammer: us understand, we want to cut to the chase you really have to tell me.
Benjamin Hammer: So as of right now I I don't see any other audience questions, but I do have a couple that I came up with while listening to your talk if you don't mind.
Benjamin Hammer: certainly go through a couple of those and then we are nearing our 730.
Benjamin Hammer: End time but yeah let's just start out with one of them here.
Benjamin Hammer: Do you play any digital games and if you do, do you play for fun or for research purposes.
Eric Vogel: I play for fun.
Eric Vogel: So now, honestly, what I do probably more than anything else, especially since I started the pandemic is play digital adaptations of board games on platforms like.
Eric Vogel: board game arena you caught a or some of the kind of more sandbox II ones like tabletop simulator or table topia, but I also i've played.
Eric Vogel: computer games, most of my life, I had a vic 20 when I was a teenager and play the games that you could play with five K of Ram and.
Eric Vogel: made my way up through commodores and things, and now I do I play a lot of now a master variety master of a Ryan, which is game I played.
Eric Vogel: You know, back in the day and play the new version now I tend to play a lot of kind of forex computer games, I also play.
Eric Vogel: All kinds of games on my iPad that's become kind of a fixture and all of those I really play for fun once in a while I will actually get ideas kind of very abstract ideas for board game i'm not exactly mechanics more like dynamics out of.
Eric Vogel: computer games or APP games, when I was working on the Dresden files cooperative card game, I was playing.
Eric Vogel: A lot of kinds of puzzle Lee.
Eric Vogel: sorts of games things like garden escapes like kinds of games on my iPad and just noting the way some of the.
Eric Vogel: Things you select kind of functions, like the power ups bombs and things that function.
Eric Vogel: Even though you never recognize the things in the Dresden files as being related to those things or looking or just kind of the pattern of how things iterate in the game and.
Eric Vogel: recognizing that well sometimes you know just getting a good favorable flop of cards is you know, a big factor in the in a cooperative game because.
Eric Vogel: Because you don't have other players to play against you need something to create a challenge system.
Eric Vogel: and recognizing the difference between kind of how one randomly out another and garden escapes really kind of influenced whether I was going to win playing that time or not or or my path through that kind of influenced by thinking in a way, so.
Benjamin Hammer: Oh yeah.
Eric Vogel: But it wasn't consciously done his research.
Benjamin Hammer: gotcha yeah I mean, even if you're not consciously going into it, for research it'll still plant some seeds in there and that sort of ties into what I believe might be the last question for the night here unless somebody comes up with something for me in the chat there.
Benjamin Hammer: Do you think it's super important to offer an original mechanic in a new game, or can you make slight modifications to existing mechanics that you've experienced in other games and drive interest in in in that way with with a modification rather.
Benjamin Hammer: than an entirely new central mechanic.
Eric Vogel: it's important to me as a designer that I created a new mechanic that feels substantially new.
Eric Vogel: But that's really for my own satisfaction as a player, I sometimes really like a board game that has really nothing new about it or certainly nothing substantial knew about it.
Eric Vogel: Trying to think of an example of that.
Eric Vogel: Recent game i've been playing this game called wild space, and I think it's a great game it's loads of fun I don't know that's not a good example.
Eric Vogel: scratch, that is, I think about it wild space does have some original mechanics about it, but I can't there are games out there that aren't really doing anything that I haven't seen before, but they may be doing it a little bit better.
Eric Vogel: Something i'm not necessarily really through McCann what I think it was mechanical differences exactly it may be better balanced, it may play faster.
Eric Vogel: It may just be more interactive than the game, you know so kayla's the game that pioneered the worker placement as mechanic.
Eric Vogel: You know, is clearly more original than later worker placement games, but it's actually one of my least favorite worker placement games I just don't happen to enjoy its way of using mechanic.
Eric Vogel: So I don't think it's necessarily.
Eric Vogel: Important to that is really very much importance to me personally it's what keeps me interested in the enterprise.
Benjamin Hammer: Totally yeah yeah one more here you, you did mention bad or poor balance game balance earlier if you're comfortable naming names what are some games or board games in particular that you feel are poorly balanced.
Eric Vogel: I I really don't like to name and and change honestly.
Eric Vogel: But I will say a little bit about why I don't like to do it um it's not because it's an inherently necessary necessarily a terrible thing to do, but contextually I the board game world has an awful lot of negativity in it and there's a lot of.
Eric Vogel: there's a big part of the audience who who's just all of their excitement is derived from being able to kind of shoot down what they don't like and it's.
Eric Vogel: If there were if there were less of that globally in the board gaming world in i've.
Eric Vogel: i've had friends publishers and other things we've actually kind of left the bargain world because it just got to be too much for them after a while it required too much kind of thick skin.
Eric Vogel: And i've seen.
Eric Vogel: Public Figures and the board game will be gone after in a way that was just just horrific just monstrous and i'm sure that I know for a fact that happens in the video game world too, because it, it makes the news sometimes.
Eric Vogel: When i'm done.
Eric Vogel: But i'm so so behind closed doors, I can be as bitchy about board games I don't want gossipy is the next person, but I don't think it's a great thing to kind of put out in the.
Eric Vogel: In the world because there's just coals to Newcastle there's too much of it around already.
Benjamin Hammer: that's fair well.
Benjamin Hammer: In an effort to not end on a negative note.
Benjamin Hammer: I have one more question here that I came up with early in the lecture have any of your board games been digitized or do you plan on digitizing any of your board games in the future.
Eric Vogel: Yes, well, first of all, if if people wanted to digitize them by digitizing the ball, but so far.
Eric Vogel: Gone so.
Eric Vogel: The main example of that would be the Dresden files which has a APP for steam and ios you know.
Eric Vogel: Oh yeah all right.
Eric Vogel: Nice it's very nice APP for it um it's co op so it has a solo play mode and that works very well for the APP.
Eric Vogel: The my game Romans go home had a digital implementation on a website that's not well known in the US called waters you but it's a it's free it's a free to play board game site so.
Benjamin Hammer: Very cool.
Eric Vogel: And and technically, the first digital and implementation that I had was hibernia, but that was just a vassal module I don't know if you know what vassal is but it's a very old.
Eric Vogel: system that I think was originally created for play by email it's a sandbox play by email system and i'm To be honest, somebody else made it, I never been able to get vassal to work, it just goes back to you know 1990s computer stuff when you really have to know your way around.
Benjamin Hammer: gotcha yeah yeah you really did you really did alright well that's all the questions I have and it looks like there's no questions left in the chat so i'm going to wrap our little Q and Q amp a segment up for the evening Thank you so much Eric.
Eric Vogel: Thanks so much thanks management and thanks ethan for having me I really enjoyed it.
Ethan Wilde: yeah Thank you Dr Eric vogel and congratulations on your new game title first empires.
Ethan Wilde: Thank you, thank you Benjamin if you don't happen to be the lucky individual tonight who will win a copy of this and i'll send out an email about that.
Ethan Wilde: Later tonight to the winner don't hesitate to pre order your own copy I shared the link to the as modi COM site where the pre orders are available.
Eric Vogel: Wherever you just like to go to your friendly local game store it's going to it should start popping up in friendly local game stores about march 12 or so.
Eric Vogel: Or you can always ask them to work for you, I always like to encourage people to use the brick and mortar stores, too, because they need our support.
Ethan Wilde: Absolutely that's a great idea and we have a great local game store here in Santa Rosa on mendocino avenue outer planes I think it's the.
Ethan Wilde: name of it shout out to everybody who's still here or watching the recording of this will be back at the end of March.
Ethan Wilde: With our next talk in the series march 31 at 6pm the last Thursday, the last day of March with Sean Nelson an instructor and a recruiter at two key K two K games, excuse me, talking about career strategies for getting into the video game field thanks again.
Eric Vogel: I was a lot younger and that photograph, so I hope, none of you were disappointed by the marketing.
Benjamin Hammer: Not at all you look great.
Ethan Wilde: Alright, with signing off for everybody tonight Thank you all and we'll be back at the end of March have a great night.
Benjamin Hammer: Thank you again.
Eric Vogel: Ellen.