John J. McCallion, the boardgame-centric editor at large for GAMES Magazine, published an interview with me in the July 2012 issue of GAMES. So, go out and buy a copy (if you aren’t already subscribed), turn to page 75 and look for my big, shiny, disembodied head floating in the middle of the page.
If you’ve read any of his boardgame reviews in the magazine, you know that Mr. McCallion has a way with words … especially an exceptional ability for packing great density of information into a very efficient wordcount. So, one of the last things I sent to him during our back-and-forth series of e-mails (which was our method for conducting the interview) was that he should feel free to edit my words as needed to fit into the space he had available for the article. He did that and I think he did a great job of coaxing my original intended meaning out of many fewer words than I originally provided him with. However, this means that you may notice some phrasing or word choices that you wouldn’t normally hear from me.
I was quite happy that he was able to include my prompts for a few of my favorite game design related things … namely:
- Board Game Designers Forum — www.bgdf.com — A very good online community of designers, from absolute beginners through industry vets. Such a good resource to learn and to share.
- The Game Crafter — www.TheGameCrafter.com — the publish-your-own-game specialists, where you can buy most of my games. There is a special paragraph specifically dedicated to discussing the merits of TGC on page 76 of the interview.
- Protospiel — www.protospiel.org — an annual designer get-together held in July in Ann Arbor, Michigan. I’ve only attended once, in 2009, and I do plan to be there again this year. Also, there are a number of these sorts of get-togethers throughout the year and all over the country … but my trip to Protospiel had such an enormously positive impact on my designing that it hold special importance for me.
This is quite an honor and exciting thing … please check it out and let me know what you think!
-Matt 🙂
Cyrus
Awesome! Congrats, my friend!
MattWorden
Thanks, Cyrus … soon it’ll be a trifecta: LMDS, GAMES, and (soon?) FatherGeek?
Alex Coulombe
Great interview Matt! As you said: very concise, but a fascinating read.
That’s interesting that you lost your favorite mechanic in the transition from Jump Gate to Space Mission. Was there a back-and-forth debate about that, or did you just have to nod your head and acquiesce to everything they wanted to change in the game?
Congrats on all your success!
Jeremy Southard, Wastex Games
Wow Matt! That was a great interview! Congratulations, my friend!
MattWorden
Thanks, Alex & Jeremy …
Working with Schmidt Spiele has been very good — they are a class operation. Thorsten Gimmler, who is the primary developer for Space Mission, was the one who did the rule adjustments, testing, title and planet renaming and other project coordination. They wanted to simplify the game from the start and have the resources be hidden information. I don’t think the Black Hole mechanic can work with hidden information — so I thought his solution worked pretty well with those underlying constraints in place.
We traded some e-mails early on, and then again when things were getting finalized. In between was a sad and busy spring and summer for me and my family, where both my father-in-law and my own father passed away … so, I really wouldn’t have been much help to him in the process anyway.
I think the way he went about it was as good of an approach as could be taken and still get Space Mission ready to roll by Essen.
Thanks for reading the article and for dropping a note off here! 🙂
Deanalot
Well done m8! Congrats!!