Here’s the shape of our episode:
- 00:15 – Reflecting on Our Game Design Journey
- 01:32 – Thirst Game Development Updates
- 03:25 – Future Plans and Strategic Goals
- 10:08 – The Never Ending Story
- 16:01 – What we’ve been playing
Note: we appreciate how cool you are about the quality of this automatically generated transcript <3. We’ve touched it up just a tad, but it’s pretty imperfect – and that’s what makes it special.
Michael Schofield: I recognize that I contain multitudes and at the moment of editing the me then might be a little disgruntled or might want to be self destructive. It’s “Oh, fuck this other me in the future. “
Tim Broadwater: I understand completely.
Reflecting on Our Game Design Journey
Michael Schofield: We’re here recording what I think is going to be the last episode of our fourth season: The most complex and thematically consistent season where we have been these two heroes venturing through the cosmos really picking the brains of people who are, or have, or will soon be publishing actual physical games, crowdfunding it, marketing it, and getting it out into the wild.
This is finally part of the game design Venn diagram that is actually starting to overlap with our 4v4 vampiric board game “thirst” .
Tim Broadwater: I think this will be episode 54 will be the last episode of season four. And that’s crazy. I can’t even believe that we didn’t even celebrate breaking 50.
Michael Schofield: I think the way we celebrated it was by like, in a way it not being that big of a deal, right? we’ve systematized the process so much that we were able to focus on making the content, so I think the way to celebrate it as Oh my God, we hit 50 and it feels very possible we’re going to hit a 60 and we’ll hit a 70 and we’ll probably hit an 80 …
Thirst Game Development Updates
Tim Broadwater: Thirst is a whole nother conversation, this year, unlike any previous year, we have taken Thirst to UnPub Prime Festival in Baltimore. We’ve taken it to Origins game fair in Columbus, Ohio. And then we’ll be taking it to CharCon, Charleston, West Virginia. And then I believe we’re talking about what that looks like or feels like for PAX Unplugged. We’re still very much in the getting the actual manufacturer quotes and shipping and really we’re just shopping around to see what’s the best prices that we can get and what’s the best choices to make because it’s the first time we’ve done it, but I would say, we now know the ballpark. we have numbers that we are starting to get comfortable with and understanding. So this is what we’re looking like now. Financially, it’s all the kind of research that we’ve been doing. In addition to taking the game out there and getting people to play it and keep refining it, it’s on its version 10 now after three years, which also blows my mind.
Michael Schofield: I thought it might be fun now that, this is going to be a capstone on what I think has been like a super useful season of guests. And I thought it would be fun to reflect on some of the advice that we heard and we had several folks like whether it’s MegaMoth Studios or Jack Mallicat or Kervin, who’s a very deliberate game designer and others who like span this gamut of either play, test, refine, play, test, refine, until it’s ready versus make an MVP– there can always be future iterations– get it funded, get it out there.
I’m curious where you find yourself falling ?
Tim Broadwater: Yeah. So this is going to be baller crazy and like nuts, but I’m just going to spew it
Future Plans and Strategic Goals
my goal legit is to try to get as many games out a year as possible . And so I know that we have stuff that we’re in the works– we don’t really talk about it, or we just maybe talked about people in person at conventions or on the podcast. — I definitely think now that I realize it is within grasp for us. We literally are at the point of just launching the Kickstarter and choosing the final tiers and making a choice, and that’s it.
Tim Broadwater: There’s also 2 or 3 other games that we’re also working on too.
I don’t know why we decided to do like this beefy board game for like our first one out of the box, that was something that everyone warned us against it, but I think now we’ve got enough advice from people at conventions or on the season. Hey, this is stretch goals. Hey, this is version two,, so how do you get the small thing out there that’s really affordable, that’s what people want. , that’s where my mind is at, to be honest is to get to the point to where when we retire I can put more time into this game design business.
What’s the smart decisions we need to make over two, three years to be in the best place we can be by that time period.
As we spend X amount of time a week on this in actual meeting time, face to face we cross our fingers and hope for three hours a week and we get three hours of face time, But then there’s an X amount of work. And so in regards to two people who can do a lot of work that they enjoy, and then how do we make it faster? How do we make it better?
What that says to me is we are going to be literally. situations where we’re going to have chunks of time in the future, and I don’t know if that’s a six week or a month or whatever to where that’s just we do weekly playtesting on one game, And so I’m thinking like in regards to the time that we invest and then how we’re becoming more strategic and better utilizing that time: here’s a plan sprint of playtesting.
Here’s a plan sprint of recording for podcasts. Here’s a design sprint for like our other card game or, and that’s the way I see it having to just evolve out of necessity.
Michael Schofield: The last couple of years of my life has been deeply invested in what I would call organization design and workflow design, and the way we’ve seen the results of this kind of approach on the podcast, what I think is distilling the creative work from the procedural work to get to a point where we can actually scale our time. And right now as two people for three plus or minus hours per week, there’s actually quite a bit happening.
That I think is really impressive. And the way I look at it as like the continued proceduralization, as we figure out the procedures of game development, we can really maximize our creative time. And then I’m really excited for a world where that can start getting delegated, we can actually build like a small team
Tim Broadwater: I think it’s like these partnerships, right? So we now have this great illustrator, Aiden, and he’s fantastic. And so then like relationships with game manufacturers, we have this incredible community and network of people that, We want to be peers with, as game designers and it’s just okay, you just put in the work. It’s like a karate belt or like a tournament or anything in life.
It’s just yeah, you got to do it. And we’re still, we’re like the, I think I can say it this way. Not to be all sports metaphors, but I’m a sports metaphor per kind of person. It’s there is a finish line and we now freaking see it. And if you’ve ever done a 5k or done something like that before, and you’re like, Oh my God, okay, it’s possible.
All we have to do is just, not quit. So that’s the positive energy I’m putting into it. And I also think you’re right. We’re probably gonna have to expand or grow at some point.
We’ll need people to help with booths at bare minimum. And I’ve heard this weekend That it’s like, Hey, when you get five or six games under your belt, five to seven games, that’s when you can quit your full time job. You know what I mean?
That’s when you’re actually selling games that you’re manufacturing yourself or your work partnering through a publisher and manufacturer. I’m just thinking dude, we got to get this first one out of the way and get it funded. And I think it’s so close. And then after that, I just think it’s just sprinting again.
Michael Schofield: I want to use that as maybe a way to dovetail into one of the big aha moments for me, is just the idea that there really are like quantitative numbers that imply a certain number of success, for instance, like if you can get 200, like qualified leads before your Kickstarter launches, the likelihood that you’ll be able to see that become.
Tim Broadwater: I’m
Michael Schofield: 800 contributors to a Kickstarter fund, which very likely will get you at least to a 10, 000 Kickstarter, is really interesting. You can reverse engineer and shoot for different metrics like that, which for my style of brain
is very useful.
If you had to pick one aha moment over like the two or three years or so, what do you think that is
Tim Broadwater: Two moments for me are when I actually saw repeatedly over and over at different conventions around the country that people liked thirst and they thought, Oh my God, there’s something here.
This is polished. And it’s not for everyone, but the way that fans have described it to me. And I hate to say this because it’s like, they just said Oh, it’s like betrayal at house on the Hill, but Munchkin in front of you, but as all undead and it’s okay.
I can see that it’s, I get it to some degree because people describe mechanics, But that: one is that, we saw repeated just playtesting that went very positive and people are digging it just like they just cool. They were having fun. And that’s what I really was a moment.
And the second moment is dude, this is something that even two people working like six hours a week, this is something that has to grow if we want to make this.
Michael Schofield: We are in this to become professional game publishers that has something sustainable and it’s a very different way to approach the joy in the art of making a game or making a podcast or making whatever, when you’re like, Hey, how do I do this so that there is product that’s returning on investment in some degree, and how do you make that go up and to the right
Tim Broadwater: Did you say go up to the right because you’re thinking like, yeah, I
got
you. We actually talked about this five years. Remember the first year when we did this in 2020, we said, dude, if we’re not doing it for five years, we’re not doing it.
Michael Schofield: Dude, you’re right.
Tim Broadwater: Dude, we’re going into our product release, like on the fifth year mark, right?
The Neverending Story
Tim Broadwater: had never read. The never ending story. I only saw the movie. When you got kicked out of Fantasia, when the nothing would come to people, they would get mesmerized for it and they would just walk into it willingly and then it would spit them out on earth and they would have no fantasy.
Michael Schofield: know exactly what you’re talking about. The whole lesson of the book that wasn’t part of the movie was that people on earth want so bad, they’re almost like programmed to tell you that what you’re imagining isn’t real.
That like that, all of this stuff isn’t real. It’s not real. It’s your imagination. This is what reality is. The people who have been here long enough are constantly inspired to remind you about how little magic there is.
and maybe what, like yours and my takeaway, to turn this back into a navel gazing Lovefest is that we are constantly philosophically going fuck this noise. Let’s dream a little, let’s
Tim Broadwater: Yeah. I want to go to Neverland. Yes. It’s just, figure out what makes you shine and then find out how to shine. And this feels right.
What we’ve been playing
Did you want to talk about anything else? Or is this, there’s that kind of,
Michael Schofield: No, this is going to be an episode of amazing like segues, because speaking of putting our feet on the necks of the proles and rubbing out their shine. The only thing I’ve really been tuned into lately has been the amount of hate that Hellblade 2, Senua’s Saga has been getting,
Tim Broadwater: haven’t seen
Michael Schofield: amazing.
Tim Broadwater: I haven’t seen any of this. please give me the CliffNotes version of what’s going on, cause I’ve missed all of that.
Michael Schofield: Yeah. So the TLDR is that some years ago, Hellblade 1 Senua’s Sacrifice is probably not just my game of the year at the time. Which it was, but also one of my games of the decade. And it is basically the story of a Gaelic or Celt woman her village is raided by Vikings and she has a kind of psychosis that at that time is interpreted as witchcraft or being touched, and she goes on this journey to save the spirit of her loved one, from literal hell.
This is the sequel. It’s a continuation of this story where the design mechanic that really set it apart in the first one was that there was no HUD.
In fact, what you had to rely on was The audio spatial voice, like voices in your head, someone attacks you from the back. there’s no warning they say watch out and you either get hit where you don’t, as you learn the game, they start chastising you. she’s not the one. She’s not the chosen one. How could she ever think she could do this on her own? But then finally you successfully block and the other voices in your head are like, yes, don’t listen to them.
And this is how it trains you. So the sequel came out from Ninja Theory, which just in the last couple of months and Ninja Theory in the time since had been acquired as one of Microsoft’s, studios. now it’s a Microsoft studio, Ninja Theory producing Hellblade two, and it continues her story.
The big thing that they did was focus more on the narrative and the storytelling. And they took out a lot of the. Chore, right? So if you think of what makes a game, it’s like going over here and looking in the basket or going over here and solving the puzzle, they really streamlined everything.
So it’s like a psych, a psychosis walking
Tim Broadwater: yeah, I’ve only heard positive things ever about it.
Michael Schofield: So people are saying the negative is that Hellblade two is not fun. It is too hard. And it runs the gamut, to the point where it’s become a meme of YouTubers, like YouTube game reviewers, hating on this game. there’s of course a niche, on the subreddit or whatever people are defending it or whatever.
I played this game as a fan of the original as someone who I feel is aware of the choices designers make in creating, systems of gaming And the art style and stuff and I found it Like moving and like a wonderful experience.
and also easier than the first one, It didn’t get a lot of love. I think Microsoft is having a really bad time at the moment.
Tim Broadwater: On the switch, I just got this panzeer Paladin, Legend of Zelda meets Mega Man and it’s just what the fuck?
And so I was just like, I gotta give this a try. And I’m also playing Octopath Traveler 2, which is really good. And then I’m playing the shit out of Star Wars Hunters, which is a free Online shooter game.
And so it is only on Android, iOS and switch. but you can get it for free and it is amazing. It is just I love being J3DI, who is the robot who was programmed to think he was a Jedi. so he goes around with a lightsaber, like talking like a Jedi. I’m still playing through Final Fantasy Rebirth on PlayStation.
It’s just, I’m doing it all, 100% ing it. I’m unlocking everything, doing every quest under, and so it’s just slowly me grinding through it. But it’s amazing. It’s beautiful. Final Fantasy VI was always a game where you just, it was just like fun mini games with a sad and cool love story.
It’s like really great writing, right? But it was just mini games and completionist quests, and so that’s, it’s just taking me back there again to where it’s just Oh, the fun of playing it. And so I’m just playing a lot of fun games right now and they’re eating up time. I always play dead by daylight and they just announced this year has been like the hottest year for fucking DVD.
It’s like their sixth year anniversary. So a game that’s on its original base code or that they’re not going to make a two or a three, and they just announced a partnership with Castlevania. They just got a partnership with Laura Croft. Laura Croft is the new survivor who comes out this month and they just got the fucking dungeons of dragons crossover with Vecna and he’s in it.
It’s just they’re killing it right now. So yeah, that’s all what I’m playing.
Tim Broadwater: And then on top of that, I’ve tried to play new board games every week and try Fit them in and play them.
When I was at origins, this game, which has been out for 25, 30 years, this board game was nominated into the hall of fame of board games. And I bought it and it’s from Ravensburger who made the puzzles during the pandemic And the couple who designed this was a husband and wife and they were there and they accepted an award at origins. And so I ordered it and I’m going to frigging play it. So it’s called labyrinth.
Michael Schofield: We’ve been talking. Tangentially about lots of things and also about nothing at the exact same time.
Michael Schofield: Perhaps we bring this to a close by reminding people,
Tim Broadwater: Yes.
Michael Schofield: We would really love you to sign up for free, just to say that you’re following a show that you’re interested. Sing to the algorithmic gods at thirstboardgame. com. It’s just a Kickstarter signup page. You put in your email. Or you log into your Kickstarter and you just click follow. You don’t have to do anything else.
From everything we’ve heard, people dig this game. If you like vampires and you love drinking blood, or at least thinking about it, then this is a board game for you.
Tim Broadwater: I think when we target our advertising on Instagram, it always is like, what’s your, what are you targeting? And I’m like, Monster Squad, Dracula, Vampire the Masquerade. Lost Boys. any of these read to you,
Michael Schofield: Yeah. it’s like, are you over the age of 18 and you have personal income enough to buy board games and you also love goth women and goth men and you like to pretend you’re a vampire and you watch interview with the vampire and you want to be the vampire.
Thirstboardgame. com
Tim Broadwater: No, I think we can do something with that
Michael Schofield: give me a thirstboardgame. com CTA.
Tim Broadwater: If you listen to the podcast or if you follow us on social media, please go to thirstboardgame. com. Sign up for our Kickstarter pre launch. And then that helps us know when we can launch and get the game to you.
Michael Schofield: Your donation of just 1 feeds a family of four.
Tim Broadwater: There you go. Are you wanting to take it by the way?
Michael Schofield: No, it’s fine. I was like, In the arms of the angels.
Tim Broadwater: You should definitely use this as a note to let you put sad, slow violin Sarah McLachlan music behind this.
