Lee is one of those fortunate people that took a lifelong passion and made it into a career. Not only does he have extensive experience in designing, producing and selling tabletop games, he’s also worked in the forefront of the industry having dealt with some of the biggest names in the hobby games business.
I am absolutely certain that you’ll find this interview with Lee to be a great insider’s peek to being an independent in the games business.
Jason (Gamesizing): Your company, Veritas Games, has done everything from playtesting to game design consulting, and most recently offers its own game line. Is your attention spread over all these areas or is there greater focus in one more than another?
Lee (Vertias Games): We spend the majority of our time working on our own games for release. We’ve got a couple of releases for Powerstorm (our non-collectible superhero card game) this year, but we also have several abstract board games coming out in 2008 as well (Box o’ Rocks and Rochambeau Twist). That said, we also spend a lot of time working with other companies, helping them iron out holes in their rules. We have 8 business partners and one soon to be business partner at Veritas Games Company. We have people with editing experience, technical experience, and, in particular, we have our fair share of rules lawyers. So, we’re pretty good at taking apart games and finding the holes in them. When we help out our collegues, we can often get them, in turn, to help us playtest our gaming products. So we build some very useful relationships that way.
While I occasionally do consulting for pay, when I have time to spare, also I’m willing to help people out on a pro bono basis. I spend a fair bit of my work time answering questions that beginning designers have about the industry, about getting their work printed, etc. To help cut down on redundant questions we have developed a “Game Design” section of our website.
Of course, when you are in the industry you also have to spend a lot of time learning about industry news and industry trends. Just staying up on industry news takes up a lot of time.
Jason: Is your involvement with Veritas Games your full-time job? Could you talk about your background that led you to the games industry?
Lee: I still do some technical consulting and civil rights lobbying these days, but I usually work 40 to 90 hours a week for Veritas Games Company, LLC. I occasionally do some consulting with other game companies who are on friendly terms with ours, to help on specific issues, frequently technical issues regarding game production. I designed 8 new games in 2007, more than half of which should see the light of day in 2008.
As for how I came to this point, I have always wanted to work with games. I was an only child and loved games. My parents didn’t. So they bought me games that I often played against myself, learning a lot about game mechanics and strategies in the process. In college at Harvard University (1989-1993) I was the co-chair of the Harvard-Radcliffe Science Fiction Association, and helped to coordinate gaming events of all kinds around the campus.
I got a lot of experience in game design and the gaming industry at Harvard. I did what every would-be RPG designer in the world did — I tinkered with D&D homebrew rules. I designed my first game with Matthew Duhan, a Harvard classmate; the game was a live action version of the game Clue, designed to be a cross between the board game and the movie inspired by that game. I made contact with Bruce Nesmith over at TSR; Bruce was one of the designers of the Ravenloft campaign boxed set. I went on to start up the first Ravenloft GM’s email list on the internet. I started playtesting for a variety of companies, including David Nalle’s Ragnarok Games company.
During the winter of 1992-1993 I had read some of the products in Wizards of the Coast’s Capsystem line. I made contact with Peter Adkison of Wizards of the Coast to talk with him about the line and how it might be integrated with an RPG I was working on. I became on of Adkison’s “Experts” on a generic RPG game description system that Adkison called “Envoy”. Envoy was to be the system WotC would print all of its modules in, and it would have conversions to all major RPG systems, making it a universal translator system. I think he intended on licensing it for free to anyone who wanted to use it. Think of it as the Esperanto of RPGs. Unfortunately, Envoy and WotC’s Capsystem resulted in a lawsuit from Palladium Games (if memory serves), and that made Peter gun-shy. That, and Envoy had about as much trouble becoming the universal language of RPGs as Esperanto did becoming the language or international relations. I like to think of the ENVOY experiment as the first Open Gaming License of its day.
Around that time, Adkison talked with me about a new game he was publishing — Magic: The Gathering. He talked briefly about me coming to work with WotC, a company that was being operated on promises of stock rather than salaries at that point. He sent me a private stock offering for his company, information about Magic, and I had an opportunity to buy in. Unfortunately, Harvard isn’t cheap, and I had no money to invest, otherwise I’d probably be a millionaire right now. While I couldn’t invest, Peter did send me copies of Magic before it was available on the market, and I promoted it on campus and with some local game stores.
Shortly after its release of Magic, Adkison got in touch with David Nalle over at Ragnarok. Nalle wanted to do a licensed Magic expansion themed to the World of Ysgarth RPG setting that Nalle produced. Since I had worked with both Nalle’s company and Adkison’s company, and had familiarity with both Magic and Ysgarth, I was brought in on the process. I was part of the development team associated with Ragnarok, and was working with Nalle and sometimes Richard Garfield on the project. We were all using an email list to communicate. The project was supposed to have been called “Legends”. Unfortunately, WotC got new lawyers around then. WotC allegedly unilaterally broke the agreement with Ragnarok. At the same time, WotC changed the art copyrights on their cards from “© John Doe” to “© Wizards of the Coast”. My affiliation with WotC came to a close.
I was invited by a design special interest group at MIT to give a lecture to the group on game design. While researching the lecture I contacted Steve Jackson over at Steve Jackson Games. He had written a book on game design and we dialogued. He was starting up a new online bulletin board project called “Illuminati Online” and he wanted me to host the game design forum. Unfortunately, the internet was a little newer back then, and people were very tight lipped with their game designs, so that part of the forum didn’t take off back in the day like more recent game design forums around the internet. But it still gave me a chance to hone my chops.
In more recent years, I started up the Veritas Games Company as a sole proprietorship. I then picked up 6 other partners in 2006 and formed a limited liability company. After more than 2 years of licensing with Top Cow Productions, Inc. we picked up the Top Cow license for customizable card games. In 2007 we launched our flagship game line Powerstorm: Top Cow Edition. We continue to work on that and other games today.
Jason: That’s quite a resume you have! What I find interesting is that even though you are a game designer it seems that a number of activities that occupy your time are business-related, which includes running your company. Is that by desire or necessity? Do you believe it’s possible to earn a full-time living just focusing on game design if you’re an independent inventor?
Lee: With me it’s by necessity. For some, it’ll be possible to make a full-time living doing nothing but game design, but that’s going to be fairly rare if you aren’t working for an established company. As I’ll discuss below, most game designers have to bring to the table a whole range of talents in order to be successful, and in that case, they likely didn’t start out by doing nothing but game design — they probably had some skills in business or self-promotion, at least at the start.
Not everyone in my company has to know about industry trends, but I have to. I have to know how to handle our finances. I have to communicate with distributors, retailers, and consumers. I also maintain our website (with only occasional assistance from one other business partner). I do most of our page layout. I do not always do the final draft of the graphic design, but I participate heavily in it, and handle almost all our art buying and print buying. If there’s a trade show or convention, chances are that I’m there even if nobody else is. I spend a vast amount of time trying to find inexpensive components with low minimums to let us experiment with test marketing new games. While we occasionally consult with a lawyer, I do all the first drafts of all our contracts and handle 95% of all our legal negotiations.
Even with 7 other business partners and a another one potentially getting added to the company this year, I do around 95% of all the business transactions, about 90% of all the web publishing, and almost 95% of all the communications for the company. My business partners help with editing, playtesting, game development, and sometimes with selecting art for a project. Several of them contribute a lot of time to the company in primarily the “game design” side, but inevitably, most indie game designers need to be part designer, part entrepreneur if they are trying to make a serious living off their efforts.
The key word in your question above is “independent”. I’m assuming that this means you aren’t part of a large existing game publishing company that has a large staff, but that you are mostly going it alone.
For an independent designer, it is pretty rare to make a full-time job out of your skills without spending some time along the way on things like page layout, web site design and programming, and convention and trade show attendance. Every time you lack a skill set or the ability or desire to go to conventions yourself you are outsourcing, and outsourcing is hellishly expensive.
If the indie designer is willing to work on RPGs and is willing to do some page layout, then there are avenues to get your game to market (print on demand publishing plus industry consolidators like Indie Press Revolution) that can really limit the amount of your day that you have to spend doing the grunt work and business side of things. As a general rule, indie game publishers really need to spend a lot of personal time either doing business and sales, or otherwise raising product awareness through the development of a personal web presence or a broader awareness through convention attendance.
Some PDF publishers can also get away with just page layout and game design skills, with minimal additional business effort by publishing their works through PDF game houses like RPGNOW.COM. Really successful PDF publishers know how to self-promote, and some have built up their own name recognition and their skills by working for a time in the field of print publishing.
As a general rule, however, game designers need skills in all the following areas: game design, graphic design, art creation or art buying, component pricing, manufacturing, advertising, marketing, shipping, warehousing, and distribution. Every area you personally don’t have the skills or desire to do yourself in represents something you are either going to have to outsource or do without. Either of those is costly, and will likely prevent you from making a living at your job.
Good game designers in the modern era tend to be skilled commandos. They know something about page layout, web publishing, self-promotion, and game design. The most common things to hand off and still be able to make some reasonable profit on your games are graphic design/art and distribution. Many game designers have access to clipart collections or have a friend who is a graphic designer, willing to work at reasonable rates. Fulfillment consolidators like Impressions and Key 20 can make it less painful for you to get your work into distributors — you send your materials to them, and they help get you into distribution, which is a challenge unto itself. But again, except for people doing you a one time favor, everyone needs some kind of compensation, which cuts into the notion that you’ll be able to be an indie game inventor making a living.
If you are hoping to be the “next big thing” in game design without handling a lot of the business end yourself you could also try to take your prototypes to trade shows like TGIF Con and Toy Fair. Even here, you are really doing some business representing your product and yourself, and you are spending a lot of your own money to make these sorts of games.
Long and short of it, with the possible exception of designing PDF RPG supplements, almost every successful indie game designer can’t attain great profits by sitting in his back room doing only game design. He’ll need to build up graphic design skills, prototyping skills, and skills related to self-promotion to really reach out to an audience of interested consumers or licensors. You can get away with outsourcing everything from taxes, to contracts, to graphic design, to marketing and sales. However, if you do all that, you better be making a lot of income from your games, ‘cause that’s a lot off the top of the profits.
Without question, there are some millionaire game designers in the world, who are introverts without skills in self-promotion, computer programming, and page layout. But those are going to be the exception, not the rule. If you are going into this field full time by yourself, you should expect to wear many hats, and to realize that designing your game is only one small part of what you’ll likely be spending your time and money on.
Jason: What are your thoughts about the balance between designing a game to be commercially viable and innovating to make the most original and remarkable game you can?
Lee: That’s a really tough question. I won’t tend to work on a release unless I personally like the game mechanics, theme, or concept a lot. So, I’d like to think I release only good games.
However, I can tell you that MANY retailers do NOT care about how good a game is if it sells. I’ve been told by a lot of retailers at the GAMA Trade Show and Games Expo that they don’t personally demo much of anything and that they are not interested in how it plays; they are interested in how it sells. Some retailers are different, and are definitely hardcore gamers. Quite a number of the game retailers I talked to are gamers themselves, but only in one category of gaming: like role-players who don’t play board or card games, for example. Because of this, and because some distributors really expect games to sell themselves, you always have to be worried about commercial viability.
With Powerstorm, we specifically made the game non-random by the deck and by the box because we were sick of games that you had to hunt cards down in and like 99% of all the players we talked to felt the same way. Going non-random was definitely a decision of commercial viability. Even the decision to produce a licensed, superhero, customizable card game was effectively pre-ordained. To expand on our company and take on business partners required that I listen to other voices, and they really wanted a licensed, superhero, customizable card game. I wanted one too, so that’s what I made. However, I think I was more willing than some of my partners and investors to work on RPGs, board games, etc.
Many of my business partners are more concerned with releasing top quality games rather than commercially viable games. I designed around 9 games last year for 2008 release. Some were good. Some were great. A couple of the good ones had fantastic sales hooks. Some of the great ones were abstract games with no hooks, that will be tougher to sell. We went with the abstract games first, even though we’ll try to release the games with “hooks” later. I’m not certain that’s the most penny-wise decision, but it’s the one we made.
For a small company, I think cost of production is really a motivating factor, and it’s not a factor you mentioned directly. For instance, my abstract designs would cost under $2.50 each to produce, and some a bit less. They can be done in very small quantities with a risk of a few hundred dollars plus marketing expenses (which can be as big as we want them to be). The themed games were going to have production costs around $6.00 per unit, can only be made in large quantities, and were going to cost thousands of dollars each plus marketing expenses.
Since we already have a lot of money tied up in Powerstorm, our flagship product, we went with great games that are a bit harder to sell, and have low risk, as compared to good games with more financial risk that might be easier to sell.
You always try to release the best games you can come up with, but you have to constantly be aware of market viability, cost per unit, and overall financial risk.
Jason: I’m sure every player out there has a different idea of what they consider a great game. From your perspective as a designer, what are your standards of “great?”
Lee: I’ll answer the question from the perspective of board and card games first. A great game can have some elements of luck, but generally only to add tension. But a great game should be dominated by strategy and player-oriented choices. A great game shouldn’t be quickly “solved” if it’s an abstract game, as all great games should have replay value. If the game is themed, the mechanics should help emulate the genre or theme. While there are a few games that I’d classify as “great” that take more than 2 hours to play, I think as a general rule, a great game is playable in 2 hours or less, so that it can form the basis of an evening’s entertainment without dominating the evening.
I find that some games are so controlled by randomness or otherwise have so few strategic options available to the players that they should no longer be classified as a game, in my view of things, but as a pastime, something you do to pass the time. A game to me always has decisions, frequent important decisions, made by its players. For a game to remain great, if it uses a great deal of chance to heighten tension, it should produce substantially shorter games. I find that players will tolerate a loss by luck in a shorter game, but despise it in a longer game. I think I’ve only seen one or two games ever that have the ability to break that general rule and that I would still classify as great games.
Regarding a great role-playing game, the rules should emulate the genre, and should not be intrusive upon the genre. I prefer role-playing games that have a director of action, a Game Master, if you will, although I like it if some elements of plot and world are actively contributed by the players. This is not to say that some of the indie group story-telling games are not great games; some are, but they just appeal to me inherently less if all the structure of the story requires an entire table full of people to agree upon the elements of the play. A great role-playing game should help you describe your character and play out that role, without distracting you from doing so. A great role-playing game is often tailored to a specific genre, and is deep enough in style and detail to capture the imagination of even those who are unfamiliar with the genre.
For all kinds of games, as a general rule, they are going to be heavily derivative of previous games in some ways, even if it is in the use of components like cards, pawns, and dice. However, each great game should do something unique. Maybe it uses old rules in a special combination to emulate a genre better than previous games of its ilk. Maybe the designer has actually come up with a never before seen mechanic that makes the game intriguing and different. Or maybe each of the mechanics of the game is, in itself derivative, but the specific combination is very novel, and sparks the imagination. Great games have some element of advancement of the art, so that they feel inherently different and innovative in some way, even when compared to games that are substantially similar to them in many ways.
Finally, all great games have replay value. Some aren’t games that you want to play every hour of every day, but all great games have replay value. Whether through changes in play configuration, introduction of changes via elements of luck, or ideally through play decisions of the players, a great game plays out a little differently each time.
Jason: It’s obvious that you’re very passionate about your work. What do you feel is the primary motivation that drives you?
Lee: Four things: First, like every game designer on the planet, I love games, and want to contribute something to the art form, to leave my mark. I am not saying that because I feel I have to; I really believe it. I have done lots of jobs over the years because I needed the money (business/tech consulting) or because I felt that somebody ought to do the work (civil rights work). Designing games is really something I personally like doing, and is something I do for myself, as well as to share with others. I am proud of my design work and am eager to let the world see my designs.
The second reason, however, is something other than a romantic notion. It’s a practical one. I’ve got a really bad visual impairment, and it’s taken years for doctors to help improve my condition. For example, I can only barely read what I’m typing to you right now. I used to do a lot of technical consulting and I was engaged in graduate studies. My vision got too bad to easily pursue either. My business partners in the game company all edit my work, allowing me the freedom to be productive and creative while not being hampered by my vision. That really gives me a feeling like I’m doing something positive. Since I don’t have a team of seven editors in other fields, I feel very lucky to have a team of smart, dedicated individuals, who help me bring my game designs to light.
Third, I work with a great set of game developers and playtesters. I enjoy their company. They are good friends, and good business partners. If I were working with different people I would probably be less inclined to have as many partners as I do. However, running our game company, while a helluva lot of work, is also a great social experience.
Fourth, I love a challenge. As far as game design goes, I am usually pretty good at working under pressure. One of my business partners requested an extra game for a boxed set we are putting together, and by the time we had met a few days later I had another game that was one of my best designs. Most of the time in life, I’m slow to release things, because I am constantly worried about the quality of the work, and tinker on it until the bitter end, sometimes missing a deadline. I have more confidence as a game designer, and so I work more quickly, and let the game designs out of my grasp more quickly. In the field of game design, as long as I have editors and playtesters, my work doesn’t suffer from quick design turn around, and I love it. I can get bored working on one thing too long, and so being under pressure to release is sometimes fun in this industry. I don’t know if I’d feel the same way working for someone else, but in our company, it works for me.
Jason: Final (and very open-ended) question: Do you have any predictions on the future of games?
Lee: Jason, I’d like to start by thank you for interviewing me. It’s been a pleasure. On to the answer to your question:
Technology is going to grow increasingly a part of the game industry. First, it’s going to become more prevalent on the manufacturing side. Right now it’s possible to do print on demand RPGs, but I think at some point “just in time” game components are going to become much more viable, inexpensive, and of higher quality.
Smaller game companies are going to be some of the pioneers in this area. For example, Guild of Blades is trying to do print on demand playing cards. Blue Panther is producing wooden game parts and accessories using a computerized laser cutting tool.
I think within the next 10 years, small game companies will have a means to inexpensively prototype their games. I expect that at some point, small game publishers will band together and set up their own prototyping and manufacturing facilities together for small run games.
Next, I think that technology will continue to shape tabletop gaming. You’ve already got Blokus on handheld devices. You’ve got Eye of Judgment scanning in cards for real time presentation of the cards onto a computer console. Do you remember the old video gaming tables (Ms. Pac-Man and Galaga)? A couple of companies are working on using the same type of coffee table look with computerized boards to represent a variety of games that can be stored in the “coffee table” and selected from on the fly.
At the same time, you are going to continue to see online gaming put the squeeze on tabletop gaming. A lot of gamers are going to be spending more and more of their time playing online games. Some companies, such as Wizards of the Coast, have been adapting their rules sets to make them portable for online play. Game designers will start adapting, and more board game designers will learn how to program to bring their own designs online without relying on others to do so.
Tabletop gaming will continue to exist, but the number of retailers is going to be squeezed down even more than we’ve seen in recent years. Online retailers will undercut brick and mortar retailers who don’t have open gaming space. Brick and mortar stores with open gaming space will survive in most instances, but they’ll have to change with the time. Either they’ll have to start charging for use of the play space (or allow it to be used only for games bought in the store). Alternately, some low profit stores may end up converting to the equivalent of a local game club (like a chess club). We’re seeing that in our local area — one of the best game stores in the Boston metro area continues to have tough financial times and people continue to do fund raisers in various ways to keep it open as a destination. Another gaming store has been having tough times as well.
In some local areas, gamers are going to have to start petitioning local governments for a place to play, as weaker brick and mortar stores close down. In some areas, gamers may be their own downfall — trying to save money by buying from online retailers while driving their local brick and mortar stores out of business, leaving themselves with nowhere to play. This will happen most in smaller communities.
Customizable card games targeting adults will continue to be harder and harder to make a profit on. Some customizable card games targeting children will continue to thrive. I think middle cost games will continue to get squeezed out in many instances in the hobby channels. There will be more games for $20.00 or less, and more games for $60.00 or more.
Those are my predictions for the industry as a whole. In the mean time, I and my business partners will continue to design intelligent games for intelligent gamers, and we’ll continue to hope for what every small gaming company hopes for — to design the next big game. We’ll also continue to do what we’ve always done — try to help out other small game companies and first time designers to overcome some of the industry’s hurdles.
Thanks for the opportunity to share my thoughts. On behalf of me and everyone at Veritas Games Co. LLC, we’d like to also thank folks who read through this entire interview. Look for our new game sets, Rochambeau Twist and Box of Rox, coming this summer to game stores near you. Keep reading gamesizing.com.
Don’t forget to support small game companies, and your friendly local game store.
Out for now. Good gaming to all!
I have to thank Lee, again, for being especially generous with his time in answering my questions in the following interview.
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