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Because my name is T. C. Petty III, designer of VivaJava and various VivaJava-related products. I am new and improved. I’m totally Twitter-famous. I have my own microbadge!
And today, my newest game — Xenon Profiteer published by Eagle-Gryphon Games — is now available for retail purchase. It's lucky number 17 in the bookshelf series. Don't feel bad about not Kickstarting it. You were probably confused.
The last time we spoke, I was a wanderer. I had just recently quit my terrible job as a daycab truck dispatcher, moved to a new "apartment" (second floor of my old boss's home), and was deciding on the next big evolution for my life. The VivaJava Kickstarter campaign became the number eight most funded game project at the time, and I was driving around the East Coast visiting neglected friends and wondering if there were any real future in this game design thing.
Four years later, I've officially upgraded my current status from wanderer to nomad. I'm still living in that same second floor apartment, still driving a dragon-egg-shaped vehicle, still creating games which now generate more publisher interest than derision, and still wondering if there is any real future in this game design thing. I have a part-time job as a croupier in a rural Pennsylvania casino to pay the bills while I attempt the starving artist/game designer routine. But the big difference is that I spent the last four years analyzing game design, slathering myself in design articles, soaking up all the juicy bits, and luxuriating in my glistening, oily, elitist game design mindset. This caused me to gain twenty five pounds. The only reason.
"Xenon Profiteer". The name just rolls off the tongue. In America, it's pronounced ZEE-nawn Praw-fi-TEER. Everywhere else, it's pronounced ZEH-nawn Praw-fi-TEER. And if you don't like the game, you could call it MEH-non Profiteer.
The first question that comes to mind when one hears the name "Xenon Profiteer" is: "Is this a sci-fi game?" No, it is not. The second question is: "Is this a science game?" Umm, not really. There's no difficult math to do and the science involved is real, but it's an economic, business, engine-building, deck-deconstruction card game. The third question isn't really a question; it's more of a statement. "Okay?"
Xenon Profiteer is a game for 2 to 4 players about the cryogenic distillation of xenon from air. Players are each given control of a new distillation facility and are tasked with improving the facility's modern system to more efficiently distill this valuable xenon and utilize it to complete true-to-life contracts for clients in various sectors. The player that scores the most points from completing contracts, building pipelines, and installing system upgrades is the winner.
Thrilling.
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Before you swipe left, let me explain the game in a more palatable way, the way I explain it to those that stare at me quizzically. It's like an un-deck-builder.
Distilling is like panning for gold, but in this case you are panning for xenon. The idea: Air goes in. This jumble of separate elements (N, O, Kr, Xe) is what mucks up the player's system, or "deck". Each turn players draw a new hand and must distill out the elements in order of real, systematic priority (N to O to Kr to Xe). When only Xe remains in hand, it can be stored, and the player can use that stored Xe to fulfill real world contracts (entertainment, medical research, etc.). Want more xenon and a little spending cash? You have to add more air, and that means junking up your system.
To help with this puzzle, you have a few upgrades to start with that you can play from your hand to augment the distilling process. And not only can you buy new upgrades from a communal line-up and place them into your deck, you can also install them to your tableau for a higher cost and use them every turn. Contracts, your main source of points, are free to take from the line-up, but require xenon to complete and give you a combination of cash and points for game end. It's all built right in front of you.
I'm not a big deck-building fan. In fact, for the past few years, I've been completely burnt out on deck-building. That's why this game appeals to me. I don't even call it a deck-builder. I call it a "card game". For me, the most funnest part of deck-building is actually the culling or getting rid of cards. I love honing. I love the decision between mitigating luck down to nothing and risking the luck of the draw because there's just not enough time, because in most deck-builders you don't say, "Look, I built this awesome deck" at the end. You either say, "I got 37 points", or "Well, I beat that boss. Game over."
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One of the main goals in development was to kill as many deck-building negatives as possible and replace them with awesome stuff that's cool. Bullet list!
• Buying something and not being able to use it before the game is over: Players can INSTALL cards to their tableau and use their abilities every turn. They can also reshuffle their deck by choosing OVERTIME.
• Excessive luck of the draw determining buying power: Money is not printed on the cards. Money is tokens and is kept from turn to turn. It's not solely dependent on your draw!
• Wasted turns: Each turn has a set of three actions that must be taken. Even if one of these actions is inefficient, there are always two more and there's always OVERTIME. The only wasted turn could be the final one and that's if someone else ends the game and you're unprepared.
• (And one specific to certain games like Star Realms and the DC Comics Deck-Builder) Buying a crappy card from the line, only to open an awesome card for the next player to scoop up: Players can take the WIPE action to discard an entire line of cards, then they have the first opportunity to BUY cards from this new line-up. Also, players may place BID tokens on cards that they want, both giving themselves a discount to purchase them later and making the price more expensive for others.
And most importantly, when you're done, instead of just a deck of face-down cards that you will never use again, you can gaze in awe at your beautifully constructed distillation facility and say, "I built this, this STUPID THING THAT LOST ME THE GAME BY THREE POINTS!" And flip the table.
But Xenon Profiteer wasn't always an oddball deck-building alternative for nerds. Before I even came up with the concept for the game, there was an evolution in my game design philosophies, an epiphany that set me on the track towards the navy blues and deep purples, the sexy modern look of this high-concept game of facility management with a really hot logo.
Some of the comments I make within this diary are going to be very personal, and I will cross that line. I tend to do that when something is close to my heart. I will divulge information I probably should silence. I will show you the color of my heart, that cold metal, mathematical thing in my chest that makes me care deeply about something when I shouldn't.
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Excursions Into Boredom: The Birthing of Xenon
Why are board games so boring?
Sometime over the last few years, I discovered a weird, but universal truth about my game designs. The more boring the concept of the game, the easier it is to freely design and create a new world to explore. There are fewer preconceived notions about how the game has to work or what mechanisms must be implemented for players to enjoy the game. The more epic and ambitious the idea, the more potential for me to revise inside my head for months and months until the game itself justifies its attachment to the coolness of the theme — which in many cases is never.
There's something deeply humorous (absurdist? dadaist?) about creating a game that transforms an activity that sounds absolutely un-fun into a deeply rewarding experience, and it's apparent that I'm not the only one that agrees. Some of the most popular games on this site have the most boring titles, cover art, and themes that the world has ever known, but against all odds, and with intense focus on the fundamentals that make gameplay truly engaging, they pull even the most skeptical board gamer deep into their worlds of abstract grids and crop farming and transitioning from canals to railroads. Seriously, Brass is a game about the transition from canal systems to railroads. Riveting. How is this not considered ridiculous? How is it not considered art?
For example, here's a list of some of the ideas that I have written notes about during my brainstorming sessions, searching for the truth in boredom. Pirates of the Carbon Copy: The game about being a pirate accountant managing receipts or letters of marque for plundered goods to pass through naval blockades. Watch It Grow!: The game about watching plants grow. Towers: The Game of Building Towers. The Lady with the Dog (based on an Anton Chekhov short story). Copyright And Patent Law: The Game. Scuffles: Minor battles in history that were seen as small tactical maneuvers. Sleeping Well: The Game about the Science Behind a Good Night's Sleep. Reading Is For Everyone: A game literally about reading books.
Why do I do this? Why does any of this work? Because it's funny or historically significant or weird. And it puts a specific focus on the game itself, the interweaving mechanisms and the branching strategic possibilities inspired by real, unexplored systems; it makes the process exciting. Even with the designers who have no idea they are creating something that makes people want to hammer nails into their toes just to remind them that they are still alive, it's hard to argue with results. You make the unbearably cryptic accessible. You make games with names like "Hansa Teutonica" or "Village".
Sorry, I fell asleep writing that last sentence. The freedom to create interesting mechanisms that support the theme without fear of alienating the target market creates intrigue. (Also dismissal, but we'll address that soon.) Because if you name your game "Dragon Rampage" or tack the friggin' word "Legacy" or "Wars" on it, it's an equally uninspired, banal snoozefest of a pandering title.
I've been trying to unlock the key to what makes a board game boring. Is it the drab atmosphere, the browns and grays and silvers of a nondescript renaissance age village? Is it a focus on abstract mechanisms that interweave themselves into a chimeric point salad? Is it another fantasy or sci-fi themed game with a ridiculous theme and focus on rolling dice to hit, when you could be playing a more immersive video game instead? Is it cards with incidental art and a single number in the upper left corner? Is it cards with words? Is it the constant thumbing through dry rulebook pages with ambiguous text blobs? Is it being forced to make everything "family friendly" even though most all dedicated board gamers are way past age 21?
I think what I've discovered is that a game is boring only if the gameplay it has to offer isn't magical, if it doesn't distinguish itself by making you think in a new way or engaging you within its world. Board games have this transformative ability to actually improve a player's life by challenging their brain or bringing them back to emotional normalcy. (See episode 5 of Deep Design included at the 38:00 mark on the Perfect Information Podcast.) They have to power to surprise and delight, but most importantly, the power to challenge your assumptions. It's why changing a theme simply to include something that "sells", like dragons or space battles or both, just shows how abstract the game system actually is. It ends up feeling wrong. Players can tell.
Xenon Profiteer was created due to this Twitter interaction.
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I don't know which rulebook Ben Pinchback (one of the Fleet designers) was proofing at the time, but it must have been imperfect because I went on to create Xenon Profiteer within the next few days. In fact, I was able to create the beginnings of what would become Xenon Profiteer as I stood around at a dead table, not dealing cards. I made my first scribblings on a handful of rectangles cut from a single sheet of watercolor paper, and the long road to creating the single greatest game about cryogenic distillation EVER began.
Why the name "Xenon Profiteer"? Well, originally it was entitled "Xenon Profitier" with an extraneous, French-looking "i". This was an homage to two games that I enjoy that have some of the least engaging titles and box covers I have ever seen: Credit Mobilier and Global Mogul. To make it worse, I began to abbreviate the title to "Xe$Pro", something which can still be seen on the old PnP files and was designed to look like the old FoxPro or Quicken business logos from the 1990s.
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I had become obsessed with merging gameplay and theme in a way that cannot easily be separated, yet still keeping that strategic, puzzly core of the Euro. It's one of the biggest criticisms of the genre: pasted themes and abstraction. I've been challenging myself to design games that absolutely cannot be transposed into other themes without drastically altering the gameplay. The idea of culling a hierarchy of items to get down to the one you want was alluring to me.
I won't mention the specific details about the revision process, or how I came to create the connection system or the permanent tableau of a facility. These all progressed naturally as solutions to problems early in the design process, but I will mention that I stepped far from my comfort zone with this one.
Designer Chevee Dodd is always adamant about relaying the same advice for all new designers: Make a prototype as soon as possible and as cheaply as possible. I rarely take this advice. I spend months planning a prototype and writing notes in my journal until all the pieces come together perfectly and I make the first game. But since I had never made a card game before, and I knew that card games generally require hundreds of iterations and plays before all the interweaving powers and mechanisms hash themselves out, I took his advice.
I made a prototype in fifteen minutes. It sucked. I fixed a piece. It sucked. I fixed another few things and made another. It sucked less. Within three nights of playing the game by myself time after time, I had created seven different iterations with pen and paper. Sleeves just got in the way of revisions. In one month, October 2013, Xenon Profiteer went from not existing to beta form and received at least fifty playtests, both solo and with my loyal playtesting group whom I love to death. I guess I have to admit that Chevee wasn't wrong about at least one thing!
Creating a deck-destruction game, or a reverse deck-builder, isn't necessarily a unique idea. Just about everyone has decided to put a spin on deck-builders in every conceivable way possible and it's generally very annoying, but I think this is what intrigues me about a game about isolating the element xenon. The mechanism isn't being forced into the fray; it literally makes perfect sense. There's no artificial "elevation through theme". It's a boring concept that is fueled by mechanisms that work and that are fun.
Convincing others that a game like this could be fun, that would be a challenge, I assumed. Who wants to play a game about cryogenic distillation? Show of hands!
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Enter The Ion Award
"5/10: I could see this being more appealing to the hobby games market with a sci fi graphic design added." —anonymous judge feedback from Ion Award competition
I didn't think any publishers would want my game. I wasn't being histrionic. I assumed, rightly so, that the esoteric theme about cryogenic distillation would confuse them and a lot of potential players.
During the brisk, wintry months of 2013, I played the game with Chris Kirkman from Dice Hate Me Games to get his personal opinion. We both agreed that it was a good game, but it just wasn't something that fit into the Dice Hate Me Americana Boutique brand. It was at that time that we entertained the idea and started the initial consultation process for me to self-publish the game. I wanted to give it a little time and send some feelers to publishers, just in case. Maybe someone could figure out a way to add dragons, plaster a new theme onto it, and make a viable product.
A few days later, I found out about a little contest called the Ion Award through some errant Twitter posts and made a quick decision to submit my game for consideration. At that point, I had already posted a PnP beta version to my Tumblr blog and had a few playtesters respond, so I knew that the rules were functional. I sighed a little inwardly as I Paypaled over the entry fee, knowing full well that the Ion Award ceremony took place in Salt Lake City at SaltCON and that it was long shot.
But now that the contest is over and it's been two years, I get to start a little drama! I found out that I had won the contest well in advance of the actual announcement date. Okay, I didn't "know", but unless I didn't screw something up, I was in the final four entries and had a very very good chance. My first indication that I may have a good chance at winning the competition was when one of the judges of the contest contacted me through Twitter and stated how cool it looked, confiding in me that he had rated it highly and that he heard through the channels that other publishers had as well. Other publishers? I won't rat on my informant. Let's just call him P. Nickell. No, wait, that's too obvious, let's call him Patrick N. instead.
So, yes, the startling secret I discovered that same week was that several West Coast publishers were actually judges for the contest and used it as a casual game-farming tool. Cue the next day, when a second publisher contacted me by email. And then a few days later another by Twitter. And then another by email. And then another by email. I was reminded of the old Lending Tree commercial tag-line: "When publishers fight for you, you win!" Suddenly, my completely oddball little card game had several intrigued parties.
I was scouted at Unpub 3 by Ralph Anderson for Eagle-Gryphon, who was waiting patiently at my blue table when I arrived that morning. That was back before Unpub 5, when on Saturday morning the entire convention hall wasn't standing room only. I rounded up two other designers to play, and we ruined the plastic tablecloth with my sleeved grayscale prototype. Shortly afterwards, I sent out two prototypes to them for testing. I paid my "real entry fee" which turned out to be a four-hundred dollar plane ticket to Salt Lake City, and suddenly, my unmarketable, unairing, un-deck-building game was no longer going to be unpublished!
Here is me, humbly accepting my award. (Just to be clear, there are at least four different fonts on this award. And the game title is not in "comic sans". It's clearly a more dignified "marker felt". Much classier!)
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Also, here is me sending my mom a selfie from outside the original Utah Mormon temple. I took a convenient rail downtown before my flight home from SaltCON and spent a few hours walking around. In our last episode of T. C. Petty III designer diary, I stated that I was brought up Mormon. I felt somewhat obligated, somewhat excited to make my pilgrimage. It was strange to see so many taller, modern buildings surrounding it, blocking it out. There was a cool mall nearby sandwiched into the buildings over multiple blocks. I had a cheesesteak. It was a weird feeling.
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Luckily, I was able to repair my relationships with all the publishers that I regrettably shirked during the competition, and Michael Mindes from Tasty Minstrel Games even got revenge by holding one of my other games hostage for five months, so now he owes me a published game.
At SaltCON, I met for the first time with the Eagle-Gryphon team and shook Rick Soued's hand (the owner), met Toby and Joanne, and everyone was very warm to me. They had even been talking during the show and stated that they were thinking of running the Kickstarter in July! I think I briefly made a face somewhere between surprise and disbelief where all the folds in my cheeks went in different directions, but nodded politely. It was April. Three month turnaround would've been awesome, but I realized that there was no way that was happening.
It totally didn't happen. Sometime around August, after talking to Matt Riddle (the other Fleet designer), I sent a follow-up email, curious about the status of everything. I'm a pretty laid-back individual, so even though we spoke briefly at Origins 2014 (VivaJava Dice was releasing then), that was my first official check-up since April. I think the response was something like, "Well, what ideas did YOU have?" As you can probably expect, it wasn't a response that thrilled me.
Luckily, I had done a little research of my own, had a few outside conversations with other designers in the Eagle-Gryphon queue, so I was prepared for what was going to happen next. I was about to be offered a budget and a timeline. Full control.
One of the positives about having full creative control over a project is that your "vision" is rarely compromised; one of the negatives about having full creative control is that you have full control. You do nearly all the work. You don't always get paid.
Full disclosure: Xenon Profiteer as presented in the box was made on a shoestring budget. I was given the task of art director/project manager for Xenon Profiteer after a few months and I gotta be honest — I didn't want it. I'm not an art director.
But I was in a difficult position at that point. There was the option of saying no. However that wasn't really a good option. Either I could assume full control over the art direction and attempt to ensure a quality game at standards consistent with my own aesthetical tolerance as a game consumer, or I could roll the dice, refuse to do the work, and possibly end up with no game at all or a Wizard's Brew. Shudder. I chose to do the work.
Luckily, Daniel Solis, a graphic designer and game designer I highly respect, was very generous with his pricing and the timing was right. I also happen to create spreadsheets for my games in the exact same format that he does. His work was speedy and solid, and without too many revisions together we were able to create a shared vision that makes me very proud.
To Eagle-Gryphon's credit, they had originally expressed interest in a possible theme change which I was ambivalent about, but they decided to allow the quirky theme to remain. When I started adding thematic flavor text to cards, changed the size of the cards to bridge, and added a fourth deck of cards to the game during further testing just to make sure that it was extremely unlikely for a pile of element cards to run out during the game, they did not balk. In fact, with the exception of the thirteen-card expansion that was noticeably absent from the final game box, even though I proofed the cards (the rules for which are included inside the game box), the entire game was produced at a high level of quality with all my specifications. Very awesome. And when I didn't catch that the player count icon stated 2-5 players (while the game is for only 2-4 players), they were nice enough to add a sticker to the box.
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Yes, somehow, after months of work and proofing three times electronically and physically, I didn't notice that the game box stated 2-5 players and nothing in the rules or anywhere else contradicted this. It wasn't until after I created a final prototype using the box for Looting London and gluing the digital proof to the outside that my dad casually mentioned at a family dinner, "Oh, 2-5 players, that's pretty good". And I casually replied, "No, it's only...fffffuuuuuuUUUUUUU..."
At times I was frustrated by the experience. I actually sent a final production PDF file for the rulebook using an Indesign save file with the name "xenonrulebookrevisedbfuckyou", unaware that when InDesign creates PDFs for print, they actually put the file name in the margin. When I received an email from someone, luckily not Rick, stating that there was a problem with the margin, I saw the filename. My face went pale and I freaked out and immediately changed it before re-sending the revised file. I'm not sure whether Rick ever saw it, but I apologized profusely and crossed my fingers and never mentioned it again. Lesson learned: Don't name your files while angry after being up for twenty-four hours working.
On that note, even though I hated having to do it, I created the entire rulebook myself from scratch. I did. It was out of necessity, but in the end, the experience was amazing. Case in point, if you like the rulebook to Xenon Profiteer, feel free to hire me to do your rulebook's layout. My rates are reasonable.
Here's why it was awesome: During the Kickstarter campaign, the near-complete rulebook was uploaded to the Eagle-Gryphon website and backers could peruse it. Well, it just so happens that Heiko Gunther, the graphic designer responsible for several Artana titles and the Glory to Rome Black Box edition, likes VivaJava Dice, so he read the rules to Xenon and came onto the BGG game forum page with a question.
I have always struggled with rulebooks. Rulebooks are hard. Ever backed a Kickstarter project? There's a ninety percent chance its rulebook sucks. It's one of the big reasons why people use the phrase "typical Kickstarter". Awesome art. Awesome components. Hopefully awesome gameplay. Rulebook sucks. Typical Kickstarter.
Heiko critiqued my rulebook by stating that even though it said words, it didn't actually state anything definitively. His brief corrections were absolutely spot-on, and I thanked him thoroughly through Geekmail. We started talking, and the next day, after I pressed to see whether anything else was amiss, he sent me a huge list of problems with the rulebook. Seriously, I'm not going to post it here because it was long and thorough, but I systematically jumped into the rulebook file and reworded or changed every single thing he typed. Maybe he's just a savant at this stuff and it took him five minutes, but I swear he did an hour or two of proofing work for me as a gift. I can swallow my ego easily when I respect and admire someone as much as Heiko and he is willing to help me just because he enjoyed one of my games.
I'm now getting compliments on the rulebook! COMPLIMENTS! This never happens! But the thing is, this never would have happened if I wasn't making the rules myself. It would have been a struggle to make changes like this if Daniel had control; probably would've taken two or three Skype calls. Such a labor-intensive, brain-bending, painful blessing in disguise!
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Then and Now: Adding New Tools to the Arsenal
Now that I've mentioned some of the people that made Xenon Profiteer the easily dismissible game that is taking up space on the shelves at a warehouse currently, let's take a trip backwards in time, back to 2011, back when VivaJava: The Coffee Game was still in development.
It was a balmy year filled with hope and promise, when every new day I awoke at 3 a.m. to the sound of my clamshell work cellphone chirping and every afternoon ended with me screaming at one of 35 drivers that couldn't follow instructions. VivaJava and the eventual publication of said game was like a chilled glass of iced coffee in hell. It was a twinkle of hope in a very dark place.
Back then, I did my best. I created all the prototype materials in a terrible entry-level Corel drawing program, changing and saving each file one-by-one, then transferring and pasting them into a Word document for printing. My six-year-old Macbook's fan made clicking sounds and smelled ever-so-faintly of burnt plastic the entire time.
It was so simple back then. I was so inefficient and ignorant to the wonders of technology. When I started to blind playtest the game, very few people even knew I existed. I posted onto a BGG forum with a request for playtesters and luckily received two responses. I was elated to send them my hastily cut and painted prototypes and happy to receive a few paragraphs in return about their experience. How cute.
Sometime in 2012, Darrell Louder gave me his old Mac Mini. Gave me it. Crazy generous. Included on this machine was the entire Adobe Suite. Darrell spent five minutes showing me how to use Illustrator, and it literally and figuratively changed my entire world. Within a week or two, I went from having zero experience to creating an entire prototype rulebook in Indesign, exclusively using Illustrator to create all icons and layouts for my next game design, and only begrudgingly using Photoshop when absolutely required. I was well on my way to becoming a true graphic design snob, although I still don't understand the difference between font and typeface.
By the time I was ready to create an initial prototype for Xenon Profiteer, I was utilizing advanced techniques to efficiently pump out prototypes at ten times the speed. Continuing with the social generosity, Daniel Solis showed me how to use datamerge to create cards, and before I even made the first card for Xenon on a computer, I had laid out an entire spreadsheet with all card info, text, and icons. With a few clicks, Indesign created an entire, fully updated PnP file with all cards. I was now advising Darrell and other designers on how to use InDesign for this function.
I wasn't a fledgeling game designer just fiddling around anymore. I had Adobe. I had an iPhone. I was a cybernetically enhanced prototyping machine set to kill.
I became more focused and introspective. I bought a game design journal. It was bright, candy red, and big as a textbook. I began to devour articles about game design. The knowledge I retained spurred me on to experiment more with my designs and regurgitate my findings on social media. I now have 2,400 followers on Twitter and at least fifty of them aren't bots. I started to care about color-blind people.
Here is the unedited manifesto I wrote in a fit on page 41 of my game design journal:
Quote:
I want to explore every aspect of game design. Every facet, from start to finish. I want to know every major publisher by name and face and be able to have an inside joke running with each of the cool ones, I want to know every trick and approach to creation and have examples to follow that exemplify each type of creative design endeavor. There is no subject that I want to ignore. No designer too small to glean inspiration, no jack-asses too smug that I won't be able to learn in their shadows. I will strive to be the best. I will earn respect by being true to my own design philosophies and always being willing to share any knowledge I've gained. This respect will only be used to fuel my designs until I die. I will put out the best, most consistent and competent products onto the market that I love. I will never stop. I will know everything there is to know and then I will plow on further into the abyss. And I will make a game about it. And it will be extremely good.
You were not supposed to read that.Armed with the confidence that I was truly going to charge into game design, not just as a hobby, but as a career, I started becoming more prolific, and I started defining my special approach to creating tabletop experiences.
In the excellent documentary Jiro Dreams of Sushi, Jiro is a character of singular focus. He wakes up every day at the same time. He follows the same specific steps and prepares sushi with a repetitive, meditative efficiency that only a master can attain. When he's not working, he dreams of working. His process becomes incrementally more refined with each passing day and there is a reason why his sushi is considered the best sushi in the entire world. He dreams of it. He improves every day with one singular focus.
I realized that however inspiring his story may be, I am not Jiro, and I need to embrace that fact. He does not need to be creative. He does not need to build a new world with each new project he embarks upon. I do. And I can't nor should I always resist the call of play. Both for my sanity and for this line of work, a lack of play and expression breeds complacency and staleness. I feel bad for some of the career designers that have lost their relevance in the last few years. Come on, Knizia, don't be a curmudgeon. You have your legacy. Now adapt and make a collaboration with Feld. I'll buy it.
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But it wasn't only technology and morale, I was stealing game design ideas from everywhere. Above is a picture of my decision tree for the different phases of Xenon Profiteer. To help refine the game experience, once most of the pieces were in place in a beta version, I created this tree along with the percentages to justify the existence of the game's mechanisms. The percentage represents how often a player might choose the action, and using it I knew which abilities to add in order to make the game choices more difficult and satisfying, and where to make hard cuts. I can't even remember who I stole it from.
Most importantly, I created a PnP file for Xenon Profiteer and posted it openly on the Internet calling for blind playtesters and discussion. I have and will continue to do this with every game I make. With VivaJava, I had to fight for blind playtesting. Since its release, people have craned their necks in my direction when I release a PnP file, and I am extremely grateful that my friends have taken the time to print out these files and provide me feedback. When I go to conventions, it's a warm fuzzy to have other designers and friends ask to play my prototypes.
I became deeply involved with Unpub in 2012 and have been ever since. It provides both a system of small conventions to help game designers set up events in their local area for playtesting and an online feedback system that keeps a record of and tabulates all scores that players have given each of a designer's games within the system. It's amazing to be involved with a program that started with around twenty people in a church and has grown to a main event that is expecting nearly two thousand attendees in 2016 at Unpub 6 (not to mention the smaller events that have been hosted in Brazil, UK, Poland, Canada and all around the U.S.) I've made a ton of contacts and a ton of friends.
Which is helpful because though it may not seem this way, I am shy and always have been. I need a push to break out of my comfort zone in social situations.
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My Feelings Never Change
I buy Chinese food from the same place once a week. I don't buy there because the food is amazing. (It's good, though.) I buy there because the girl at the counter makes no attempt to engage me with a smile or with conversation. In and out. I enjoy fast food and chain restaurants because they make me feel welcome. Not in a way that a welcoming smile or hug might, but in a cold, genericized "What would you like today, sir?" way that helps me blend into the situation. Local places tend to have people that want to talk to you. I don't like that. As much as it sounds ridiculous to even type it, if I had the option, I'd rather punch my order into a computer and receive it from a slot, like a vending machine, like something from a 1950s vision of the future.
But I love my friends. Even just a few days ago, when I accidentally slept through a State of Games podcast recording, my friends were immediately worried that I was dead. It's comforting to know that somebody doesn't want you dead. This dichotomy, the Internet calls this personality trait "introvert": anxiety about outsiders, an inability to small talk, and complete attachment to and comfortability around close friends. Sometimes I have to retreat from everything.
What I noticed, with Xenon Profiteer especially, is the tremendous outpouring of support from other game designers and friends. During the Kickstarter campaign, there was a Twitter message advertising the game from someone on average every five hours. For the entire campaign. Usually stuff like that hits hard on day one, then disappears until the final day. And the support just came from everywhere. All the friendly faces I'd met; their names would briefly pop up as backers. I'm terrible at thank yous, but thank you.
It's the kind of support that I'll need for every game I create, the grassroots rumbling and evangelizing of a sleeper hit, because with the release of Xenon Profiteer just now, and with the months to come, I'll have a chance to hear everything else, to let my ego wade in a overwhelming, sticky black bean soup of questions and negativity that emerges after the release of a new game. For some reason, the brain just loves to focus on the negative even when surrounded by positivity.
For example, I wrote the blog entry below just after Spiel with no intent to ever publish it. I don't know whether other people do this — write and half-edit something only to delete it or place it deep into a file on a hard-drive and forget it until years later. I do it out of self-preservation. I never call out reviewers or specific people in public. I try not to be defensive. Everyone has their own opinion, and I want them to. No one should ever feel bad about writing a negative review of one of my games or rating them, but I will share it. This is the way I cry whiny man tears — from my fingers.
Quote:
The most frustrating part about game design is the reception. Three games in and I still want to scream obscenities in random Internet people's stupid idiot electronic faces.
It's even worse for someone like myself, who becomes highly invested in the project. Many times, I'm either directly involved in the entire process, going over proofs, writing a rulebook, and developing until the files are sent overseas for production. I spend a huge amount of time openly playtesting, providing free PnP files for blind testing, and revising games to the point that other designers have started telling me to not "T. C." my games so much.
I'm a bit of a perfectionist. I've played a ton of games and have been critical of a ton of games. I want my games to be the best they can possibly be, and I invite aid from various friends and reputable sources to make sure that I'm not designing in a bubble. I want my games to create that sort of tabletop magic that I found so endearing in all of my favorite games. I want my games to be of a high quality in both components and gameplay.
And I'm not crazy when I state that my games are "good" and compare highly with some of the best games on the market for innovation and satisfying, long-term gameplay.
So when I see Xenon Profiteer get a flat 5 rating from someone random on the Internet BEFORE it's been released to the market, it's like a gut punch. Here is some guy/girl that has the opportunity to play one of the handful of copies that exist of a game that I spent two years creating and molding and sanding down to a perfect structure and they give it a 5. No comment.
A 5. This game is okay. I played it once. There's nothing new here. It doesn't engage me. There is nothing to debate. Bland. 5.
This will be my legacy. The worst and most devastating treatment. My games aren't bad; they're just easily dismissed. My epitaph will read, "T. C. Petty III: Game Designer: Why did he spend so much time on something he's clearly just okay at? I don't get it. 5/10." Yes, I will have a life rating on my tombstone.
I have to get used to this. It'll be the same with every oddball title. People won't like your games. Many of them are going to be esoteric or eccentric. Xenon Profiteer is a game about cryogenic distillation. No matter what interesting mechanisms you slap onto that shell, there will be people out there that simply dismiss it. I don't see it cracking the BGG top 100 anytime soon.
I have to remind myself of the judge's ratings from the Ion Award competition (which were gladly sent to me in spreadsheet form). Half the ratings were 4/10. The other half were 9s or 10s. Nothing in-between. If judges were that wild at the Olympics, I think you'd see a few judges getting fired very quickly. That spreadsheet hurt your brain, remember? And still, somehow, you won.
And all of this is okay. But why is it so different with the wargamer niche? Wargamers love to inflate ratings of their favorite game systems and historical time periods, even while knowingly discussing the inaccuracies and cumbersome nature of many of them. I have a game about an esoteric theme that is extremely thematic, and it induces finger-waving and boredom from the same people that would cry for something different! Imagine if wargames were rated by players in the same way. We'd see the same exact disparity as the Ion Award judges above. "It's a game. Sounds boring. 4/10." War games would be simultaneously receiving 9s and above from the dedicated players that love wargaming and 4s from the rest of the world.
What sucks is that I know the game is good and I also know it's niche. Niche within a niche. I just wish that those niche-bashers would stay quiet and let me enjoy a wildly high rating with around 500 dedicated and interested players like good war games get. Let me have my dedicated fans, adequate sales numbers, and the ability to continue making little pieces of balanced weirdness. I'm not asking for much.
Either way, it's difficult to stay silent. I've worked so hard on this game and I just saw it for real over this weekend. And it looked gorgeous. The little bridge cards. The cross-style cardboard insert. The cute Distillation Console with a player's turn sequence. When I arrived at the convention, Rik, the person who bought the copy at Essen, told me how often the game had been played and demoed over the week. It made me happy. The cards looked crisp even with all the use. The box was shiny.
When they gave away all the Spiel games as door prizes later that night, all the new games were piled onto a single table and badge numbers were read aloud by a man standing on a chair and holding a microphone. I couldn't resist watching. I wanted to see who would pick up Xenon Profiteer. Twenty names later. Forty names later. Six games left on the table and someone finally picks up the game. It made me sad. I knew that all the other games had bigger boxes and more expensive price tags, so I had prepared myself for the worst, but it still made me sad.
But when it was picked, more than a few people got excited and clapped. They pointed in my direction, and I humbly signed the first copy of Xenon Profiteer that I had ever seen.
My biggest fear has always been that it will disappear. That Xenon Profiteer will be the non-canon T. C. Petty III game. Something I did. That kinda cool thing that flew under the radar. The 5. Something about a 5 with no comment. It just sticks with me worse than any other rating could.
I fear dismissal. It doesn't help me make more games. Honestly, when I think about it, I don't really care about the ratings as long as it wins more awards! I'm so funny.
So go give Imperial Assault and Arena of the Planeswalkers a 5. It'll make all us indie designers feel angsty and cool. Stick it to the "design by committee", time-clock punching, homogenized, corporate game designers. You can return to bashing my games once they sell out and get into the BGG top 1000.
Let me be your Sekigahara of cryogenic distillation.
It's even worse for someone like myself, who becomes highly invested in the project. Many times, I'm either directly involved in the entire process, going over proofs, writing a rulebook, and developing until the files are sent overseas for production. I spend a huge amount of time openly playtesting, providing free PnP files for blind testing, and revising games to the point that other designers have started telling me to not "T. C." my games so much.
I'm a bit of a perfectionist. I've played a ton of games and have been critical of a ton of games. I want my games to be the best they can possibly be, and I invite aid from various friends and reputable sources to make sure that I'm not designing in a bubble. I want my games to create that sort of tabletop magic that I found so endearing in all of my favorite games. I want my games to be of a high quality in both components and gameplay.
And I'm not crazy when I state that my games are "good" and compare highly with some of the best games on the market for innovation and satisfying, long-term gameplay.
So when I see Xenon Profiteer get a flat 5 rating from someone random on the Internet BEFORE it's been released to the market, it's like a gut punch. Here is some guy/girl that has the opportunity to play one of the handful of copies that exist of a game that I spent two years creating and molding and sanding down to a perfect structure and they give it a 5. No comment.
A 5. This game is okay. I played it once. There's nothing new here. It doesn't engage me. There is nothing to debate. Bland. 5.
This will be my legacy. The worst and most devastating treatment. My games aren't bad; they're just easily dismissed. My epitaph will read, "T. C. Petty III: Game Designer: Why did he spend so much time on something he's clearly just okay at? I don't get it. 5/10." Yes, I will have a life rating on my tombstone.
I have to get used to this. It'll be the same with every oddball title. People won't like your games. Many of them are going to be esoteric or eccentric. Xenon Profiteer is a game about cryogenic distillation. No matter what interesting mechanisms you slap onto that shell, there will be people out there that simply dismiss it. I don't see it cracking the BGG top 100 anytime soon.
I have to remind myself of the judge's ratings from the Ion Award competition (which were gladly sent to me in spreadsheet form). Half the ratings were 4/10. The other half were 9s or 10s. Nothing in-between. If judges were that wild at the Olympics, I think you'd see a few judges getting fired very quickly. That spreadsheet hurt your brain, remember? And still, somehow, you won.
And all of this is okay. But why is it so different with the wargamer niche? Wargamers love to inflate ratings of their favorite game systems and historical time periods, even while knowingly discussing the inaccuracies and cumbersome nature of many of them. I have a game about an esoteric theme that is extremely thematic, and it induces finger-waving and boredom from the same people that would cry for something different! Imagine if wargames were rated by players in the same way. We'd see the same exact disparity as the Ion Award judges above. "It's a game. Sounds boring. 4/10." War games would be simultaneously receiving 9s and above from the dedicated players that love wargaming and 4s from the rest of the world.
What sucks is that I know the game is good and I also know it's niche. Niche within a niche. I just wish that those niche-bashers would stay quiet and let me enjoy a wildly high rating with around 500 dedicated and interested players like good war games get. Let me have my dedicated fans, adequate sales numbers, and the ability to continue making little pieces of balanced weirdness. I'm not asking for much.
Either way, it's difficult to stay silent. I've worked so hard on this game and I just saw it for real over this weekend. And it looked gorgeous. The little bridge cards. The cross-style cardboard insert. The cute Distillation Console with a player's turn sequence. When I arrived at the convention, Rik, the person who bought the copy at Essen, told me how often the game had been played and demoed over the week. It made me happy. The cards looked crisp even with all the use. The box was shiny.
When they gave away all the Spiel games as door prizes later that night, all the new games were piled onto a single table and badge numbers were read aloud by a man standing on a chair and holding a microphone. I couldn't resist watching. I wanted to see who would pick up Xenon Profiteer. Twenty names later. Forty names later. Six games left on the table and someone finally picks up the game. It made me sad. I knew that all the other games had bigger boxes and more expensive price tags, so I had prepared myself for the worst, but it still made me sad.
But when it was picked, more than a few people got excited and clapped. They pointed in my direction, and I humbly signed the first copy of Xenon Profiteer that I had ever seen.
My biggest fear has always been that it will disappear. That Xenon Profiteer will be the non-canon T. C. Petty III game. Something I did. That kinda cool thing that flew under the radar. The 5. Something about a 5 with no comment. It just sticks with me worse than any other rating could.
I fear dismissal. It doesn't help me make more games. Honestly, when I think about it, I don't really care about the ratings as long as it wins more awards! I'm so funny.
So go give Imperial Assault and Arena of the Planeswalkers a 5. It'll make all us indie designers feel angsty and cool. Stick it to the "design by committee", time-clock punching, homogenized, corporate game designers. You can return to bashing my games once they sell out and get into the BGG top 1000.
Let me be your Sekigahara of cryogenic distillation.
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The Point of It All
I like Xenon Profiteer. It's a pretty cool game.
I think most people will be surprised at how fast Xenon Profiteer is — not simply in game length (I call it a power-filler), but in the ability to begin setting up combos. The game does not last for as many turns as you might think, so every action you take needs to push you forward and the abilities you can acquire are straight-forward and feel immediately powerful.
My favorite part of Xenon Profiteer is a little hard to explain. It's that moment when you're playing and you realize that everyone at the table is trying out a different strategy, and that the strategy you tried last game isn't the strategy you have now. Each upgrade card feels overpowered, and becomes even more so when combined with other upgrades. It's a very satisfying feeling to set up a chugging engine to either drown in cash, drop bid tokens on everything, draw a ton of cards, or pump out xenon to fulfill contracts. And then watch as someone else wins by better balancing these things.
Xenon Profiteer is also one of those games that will cause a murmur of controversy in board game circles. The game is set in present day and is highly thematic, with flavor text included on every single card in the game. Upgrades are named after important pieces of a cryogenic distillation facility and legitimately function similar to their real-life counterparts. Contracts from the government, medical, and entertainment fields represent actual contracts a large distillation facility might take on. The rulebook is framed like a technical manual for running system software. The science is real. And every detail was combed over to make sure it is true to life. (Even "Pressure Swing Adsorption" is spelled correctly.) I even added variable player powers based on common résumé entries.
It's impossible to say that it isn't thematic. It does everything about thematic games so right, and yet so wrong. The flavor text is just about as dry as any sentence I could possibly find — and just about as interesting to me, personally, as the flavor text on any Magic card.
The point of Xenon Profiteer is to tap into that little thing called board game magic. Most of us don't work at a cryogenic distillation facility, nor do we dreamily fantasize about the possibility. Xenon Profiteer is my blatant homage to all the boring, esoteric Euro games that I have played and adored with absolutely no interest in the subject matter. And a little middle finger to stuffy thematic game types that can't enjoy anything outside of their flavor-text heavy, exception-based gameplay comfort zone. It doesn't sound fun at all; it just IS fun. And I hope that realization brings a smile to at least one player's face. First you get the distillation facility, then you get the xenon, then you get the power.
Xenon Profiteer takes a familiar concept like deck-building and the racing-style Euro game, creates a variation of both, and pumps out a new game. That's not exactly how I would phrase it on an advertisement as it completely ignores all of what I consider to make the game clever, but it doesn't make the statement any less true. It is new, but also an evolution. I could expound upon its loftier purpose in reverent tones, say that it is like a haiku — that is, a a simple, thematic statement that artistically examines an often overlooked piece of our modern framework. By building an infrastructure, tempering chaos, and trying to control the air itself, we can observe man's true conflict, the fight to find sense in an infinitely insensible world. A poem in game form.
It sounds good, but in the end, it's an experiment in mechanisms supporting theme. It's a weird little game, which is par for the course for me, and I think it's pretty awesome.
You can't go into Xenon Profiteer with any sense of hype. There is no fireball throwing, time travel, explosions, or anime art to fall back onto. It's a game, a little escapist fantasy about running a business that strives to draw you into its world merely by the interesting and strategic interactions players have while building their engines and solving a puzzle each turn. Less standing up and cheering; more smiling deeply and feeling the warm satisfaction in your bones.
I'd like to end this diary on a downer. Someday I'll die. The problem with dying is that it comes with that really lame part about being dead. I can't make any more games, and I can't watch all the cool stuff that happens afterward. Like, what's the point in having a long slide show with orchestral music for all the dead actors and directors at the Academy Awards if you don't get to watch your own or see the impact your life has on people in the future? I hope Xenon Profiteer is still being played after my untimely death in 2054, which I can only assume will be from being burned alive while sword-fighting through a wave of terrorists on a cliff edge. I hope it makes ripples in the timeline. I hope my future games make that ripple a splash.
Because as much fun as being lifted to heaven by a Valkyrie as I watch my flaming carcass explode in a geyser of blood against the ocean-swept rocks below along with a decimated regiment of evil soldiers sounds awesome, I'd rather spend my last moments making a particularly clever play in a game of Puerto Rico. Sounds super boring. Sounds perfect.
Thanks to everyone who supported me! Now's your chance to go buy Xenon Profiteer. It's the perfect Christmas gift for anyone who likes to breathe air.
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