Michael Shinall and Fabio Cury Interview. Their Watch Has Ended for A Song of Ice and Fire

[00:00:00] Speaker 1: Hey, it's Chase from On The Table Gaming, and today we're taking a look back at nearly a decade of A Song of Ice and Fire, the tabletop manager's game, with two people who played a pivotal role in helping bring Westeros to the tabletop. If you've been in or involved with A Song of Ice and Fire in any way, you're no stranger to Michael Chanal, the former director of design and development at CIMON, and Fabio Currie, who rose from a playtester to developer and ultimately earned a designer credit before moving on to Loot Studios. Now, together, the two of them have had a huge impact on the shape and face of the game, and with the recent news of Michael Chanal's departure from CIMON, it seemed like the right time to summon the old council back together one last time to take a look back at where that journey began and share in the telling of A Song of Ice and Fire, the miniatures game. So, Michael and Fabio, thank you so much for coming [00:00:50] Speaker 2: on to talk. Thank you so much for having me, Chase, and it's great to see all you guys again, right? [00:00:56] Speaker 3: It's been a while. It feels like it's been years, and that's only because it's been years. [00:01:01] Speaker 1: I mean, it's pretty wild. And when I think about maybe, you know, almost for you especially, over a decade of time with A Song of Ice and Fire, I'm hoping we can kind of dive in and get the big picture going back to the beginning, kind of talk about the history of the game all the way up until recent developments. Michael, with you moving on from CIMON. [00:01:21] Michael: I don't really like being brought up that it's been over a decade because we're still living in a world where, you know, 2000s was just a couple years ago. COVID basically didn't happen. You know, let's not talk about actual timeframes and spans. [00:01:34] Speaker 1: I went from a young spry chase to an elder statesman chase in the time of this game. So, uh, I don't know how you all stayed to, you know, the same look, but, uh, you know, time has not been as kind to me. So. [00:01:48] Speaker 3: Well, I, but I've definitely gotten some, I don't know what, what you call this in like eyeshadows. What are these called? Oh, those are the crow's feet. Yeah. I've got those as well. Yeah. [00:02:01] Speaker 1: I always laugh so much. I always had them from the start, but we're not here to talk about our facial structure for this. We're here to talk about A Song of Bison Fire, the miniatures game. So let's jump back and like get right into it. Um, so I know Michael, you've been with this project since the beginning. Let's go back to the origins of A Song of Bison Fire and unpack, uh, some of the things people might not know. And, you know, how did this game first come about from your [00:02:25] Michael: perspective? Yep. All right, Papa Chase, gather around. Let's talk about the great long ago and the before times. Uh, uh, so we launched the Kickstarter for the game in 2017. So that means that the start of development, everything would have happened around 2015. And that's when the first time we met with, uh, Jim Ludwig, the owner of Dark Sword Miniatures, who is the license holder for A Song of Bison Fire Miniatures. Um, Fantasy Flight slash Asmodee owns the rights to anything board game related. So we had the option of doing a tabletop miniature game and Jim had gotten the, he had gotten the rights to do miniatures because he had met George R. R. Martin at a convention years and years and years back before it was even a thing and was just nerding out about liking the book series and said, well, I've got a miniature company. I want to make miniatures based on your game and literally just kind of got into this before it was actually a big thing. So he was the one that had the in for that and everything. Um, so at that time at CMON, we had roughly like four people in our development staff. Uh, by that point I had done Dark, uh, um, Dark Age and Wrath of Kings, as far as miniature games go into the company. I've had a, even before I joined CMON, I've been doing miniature games my entire life, but those were my first professional ones. Um, and so I was brought in to a meeting and they were like, yeah, so we're getting the license for Game of Thrones. Do you know what that is? And there, I was like the TV show, they were like, well, it's, it's the books that they're based on, A Song of Ice and Fire. I was like, um, okay, so I haven't watched the show or, and I read through like the first book, uh, a while back and they're like, okay, well you need to like learn up on all this stuff. You gotta read all those books before the next one comes out. You gotta be on top. Yeah. Like they're gonna come out real quick and small side story, which I feel that there's gonna be a ton of these that just pop up throughout all this. I, I did not watch the TV show because I was living with a roommate at the time who, when he came home from work, he would just binge TV series and that's what he would do with his time. So he had just finished watching like all, however many seasons of the X-Files, like literally just from one, two, are there 15 or 25, whatever the number is, he literally would just watch them the entire way. And so he had done that also with a game of Thrones. And so whenever I got up, it was playing. Whenever I got home, it was playing. Whenever I left the house, it was playing. And that always made me just like, I don't want to watch any series. Um, so, you know, I have my knowledge of the first book there and they're like, well, well, Jim Ludwig. And they explained to me who he was. He's coming down here, um, at some point later in the year to, you know, talk about, you know, doing a miniature game and everything like, okay, well, I need to read up on this series and everything. So I read through the books, became knowledgeable about that and everything. And then Jim came down. Um, the first meeting was just, we showed him Dark Age, Wrath of Kings, basically the work that I had done, talked about potential ideas for the, the game. And, you know, we didn't have anything really concrete there at the time because we were just kind of feeling, you know, what did Jim want to do? You know, cause he was like, yeah, well, we can do miniature related stuff. We can't do board games though, because once again, those rights were owned by Asmodee Fantasy Flight. So we couldn't have a board. So the option was like, we have a, we do a war game. Okay, that's fine. We'll do that. And then, so I started designing, uh, a war game, you know, based around the setting and, uh, potential ideas that came up there. And then something interesting happened in the fact that, uh, games workshop announced that they were stopping Warhammer fantasy entirely. And cause that was our initial, like, okay, that's going to be our, our biggest competitor. Not that we were looking to compete, but that's going to be the biggest other area of this in the market. [00:06:16] Speaker 1: And so I remember they didn't just stop it. Right. They blew it up spectacularly. Yes. Um, where people with feelings at that time. Gamers with, gamers with feelings. Um, anyway, [00:06:29] Michael: so that pivoted the direction where they were like, okay, well we can make like a, a tray based, you know, kind of replacement for that. And the things at the time we were basing it to be a skirmish game, like the other two games I'd done. But now all of a sudden the direction, uh, was pivoted to being like, well, we want something more akin to Warhammer fantasy. Like, okay, sure. We can do that. I mean, it works for the setting. Um, no issue there. So started working on that. And that was essentially the start process. There was a real rocky because everything that we did, everything that we created had to be approved directly through George R. R. Martin. So if we were going to make any unit, I famously use this a lot, famously. Okay. I just use it a lot was, um, Umber Berserkers, for example, there's like one line of reference to the concept of them. And then Karstark, uh, spearmen are mentioned in one line in the books as just being, uh, something on the Vanguard, you know, like the mighty Karstark spearmen with their tower shields, blah, blah, blah. We're off the side. We had to basically, and when I say we, I was working with myself and two part-time developers at the time. That's what we had. And so, you know, I was researching all this stuff and finding these things. So we had to have that one line of reference that existed in the material at one point, then we could use it. But otherwise it was, that was basically our limitations. And gradually through that process, we were saying like, well, you know, we have to be able to like, kind of invent units much like other companies had done in the past for various, you know, uh, Game of Thrones or, uh, or Song of Ice and Fire products, noting that basically everything before this point was branded the Game of Thrones. And we specifically couldn't do that because that's HBO taking that over. And that was the, you know, their rights then. So, you know, we had to build that rapport with George Martin and his, um, the, the, the fact checkers that he basically had for his own stuff, which he is remarkably sharp about knowing all the things there as well. But then he has dedicated people on his staff whose job it is, is to be living encyclopedias. Um, so we were getting through them, getting the initial, um, items put together and everything. And I remember some of the biggest shifts in the game were aside from having it to be initially kind of like a little skirmish game to moving it to being on trays and upping the number was because George Martin himself was like, no, no, I want like hundreds of miniatures on the table and banners and all this stuff everywhere. So the scope was initially going to be very character focused, much like what, uh, tactics would kind of initially be, but yeah, but he was very much like, no, he wanted a massive war game. And the thing is, is that you can't really do something like that at the time because it's expensive and you know, we didn't want to do all that. So we, the idea was like, okay, I took a lot of the skirmish game rules I developed and kind of just, uh, warp them into, you know, being tray based. And that's the thing. So I will fully admit this, that we, a Warhammer or Warhammer was a big influence, but at the end of the day, it was Wrath of Kings and Dark Age and the skirmish games that I had worked on in the past that were the biggest influence there, because really that's what it comes down to is that, you know, Song of Ice and Fire is a, is a skirmish system that has been disguised with trays. Um, and that's not really been any secret, but that was also a basic design mandate there. Um, so that's why, you know, we have banners everywhere because George Martin loves banners and heraldry and also describing food, but herald and banners, heraldry and banners are something that he just wanted everywhere. So we had a lot of that. Um, initially the game was going to be multi-part assemble your own stuff and everything. Um, and then we got a, one of the directors of the company at the time was like, well, we want the game to be accessible. So they started pushing for everything to be pre-assembled, which was caused a lot of like kind of back and forth talk in the company about like, who is our target audience? Who are we aiming this game for? Because so that direction shifted a lot during the process as well. Initially, it was going to be a traditional war game and everything. You assemble your guys, you know, we were not necessarily going to have army books, but we were looking like that level of complexity and everything that you're going to have. Um, and then they were like, well, we want everything to be pretty simple because we want this to be accessible. And then we had a big push toward, and then Jim liked that as well. He was actually initially against that, but the idea of just like, I can take something off the shelf and just open it up and play it. That was basically the idea that switched him over. And honestly, it did a lot of heavy lifting in my mind too, of like, okay, that's cool where I can just go and like, I want this unit. I'm going to try this out next game, go pull it out and boom, there it is. So accessibility became a big push for that. And um, so that was the knowledge of the initial time there. And then also deciding what the initial factions were going to be. One of the big ones was that, you know, like we discussed having just the North as a faction because it didn't really make sense that you'd have like Night's Watch because they first off weren't a standing army and they weren't enough men there to actually be a standing army. Um, so that was the initial idea that I pitched was just like, you have the North and Jim himself was actually the one that he was actually fine with that. Then he came back later and said like, well, I just really think the Night's Watch should be their own thing. And it was like, well, you know, okay, we're sticking by the books and everything that doesn't really work out. And it was like, well, we can make some exceptions here because he, he felt that it was doing a disservice to them. And it's like, okay, sure. I see that. I agree. And that's how that split happened. Um, so that's another like point that I remember in that, uh, in those early days, just some of the, the very, very early, you know, parts of the design development process. And so, you know, you, it was like [00:12:15] Speaker 1: initial thing. You're like, you're meeting with Jim Ludwig, you're getting things approved by George R. Martin. And you said it was kind of a small team. So let's talk about that team and like, and then how did it grow outward to eventually incorporate a Fabio? [00:12:26] Michael: Uh, so at the time, you know, the, the U S team, including myself was very small and also focused on board game products. And that was their specialization. We had our Brazil department, which I had visited a couple of times there. Um, and that was consisting of around, I believe four to six designers and devs. And so a lot of the primary development, uh, was happening through them. Uh, one of the issues that kind of came up with that was that, uh, no one was an expert in war games in the company, but myself, no one even played them. And so that was kind of an issue when you have a bunch of people who are primarily only having, uh, played board games in the past, uh, trying to create a war game because they are, they are very much different mindsets and mentalities. Now, one of the things at the time is that, uh, the company had also dictated that they wanted to tap into the board game crowd, which is why they wanted the game to be accessible. They wanted to basically have the accessibility of a board game, but then it actually to be a war game. And they were very specific. They didn't want it to be just like a board game tied around being a war game. They wanted an actual war game. That's also Jim was very specific about that. You know, he didn't want just, you know, he didn't want baby's first war game. He wanted it to be accessible, but actually have like the death and strategic, uh, capabilities of war game. So that was a very kind of daunting task because I had seen that tried in the past, but it always kind of failed where you have your war game in a box. It just ends up being a war game style board game. And that's not what we wanted to have. Um, candidly, I will say internally to the company, this was also a big source of frustration to me because it felt like the directions that we were getting at the time, some of the people making decisions were far into one category that you could see that they really wanted to just be making a board game. And so every type of their decision they were pushing was to push it more into the board game category [00:14:31] Speaker 1: than it was a war game. Meanwhile, a little bit more to that. Like what, what does that look like when someone pushes there? Uh, I know war games need a lot more support. Um, you know, are you looking, you know, what, what makes it more board gaming? Well, so the things that we were being [00:14:47] Michael: pushed is like, they were always like saying, well, we need things to be less complex. I'm like, but you guys don't actually even play war games. So you don't, this is literally like the corporate side of things just giving, they're like, this is what we feel. This is what's going to be. And you know, again, these are people who have made board games and we had one, one director at the time who had, was, knew about war games. So he was actually the one that was like, okay, well, this is the, this is kind of the middle ground that he wants to see. Meanwhile, we had other directors who were just like, they've only made board games. And so they're seeing this product here and going like, well, it needs to be more X, Y, Z like, well, it can't be because that's, that's not how these games work. And you know, uh, like any company, when you have your, your creatives butting up against what your, I don't want to say your corporate over overlords, that sounds very cyberpunk, but that's, that's, that's what comes to my, my mind. It's like, yeah, the Arasaka tower is demanding we do this, but you know, there's a lot of friction that comes from like, okay, this is the product that you guys want, but it's not the one you're telling me to make. And you know, that happens at the time as well. You know, we had Eric Lang who had been hired on as our director of design and development. And he was overseeing again, about the, the less than 10 people that was in charge of all of our stuff, but also comes from a board game background. And so, you know, he had put in, he was in charge of overseeing every single project that we were doing at the time. And so, you know, he was basically our first filter that we had to, when, when the, when our, our high end like board and everything, our directors came by and gave a mandate, it would usually filter down through him. And luckily he, you know, it was very much like, you know, okay, well, this is a war game. This is not my specialization. Also, I've got a dozen board games that we're looking at. So I'm just going to kind of leave this, you know, uh, with you and then the people that you have. And that was the thing where it's like, oh, well, one of the issues is the people that we have as good as they are, and I do vouch for every single one of them. They're board gamers. We, we need actual war gamers here. And so they're like, okay, well, we'll see about finding some people. And so what they did is in the, uh, because in the U S office where I was, it was very kind of, it wasn't that remote, but it was remote enough to be an issue. They were like, well, we'll see if we can find some in around in Brazil. And so that's what they did is they did a call specifically war game play testers. And that is where the, a young, you know, blushing face Fabio made his entrance into the scene. [00:17:16] Speaker 1: Uh, probably what's your side of that story? [00:17:18] Speaker 2: Yeah. I was going to say my side of that story is wild. Uh, I was, um, I remember that the, uh, Kickstarter came out and well, in Brazil, miniatures are really hard to get and they get very, very expensive. They're very, very heavily taxed for some weird reason. They're in the highest tax bracket of all imports. And so it's hard for us to get stuff here. So you play like one, two miniature game systems tops, right? And, and it's hard and there's not that large of a community, especially because of the prices. Right. And so when the song of ice and fire Kickstarter came out, we were in Brazil, very excited because we looked at the like bulk price of the minis and we were like, okay, this is amazing. Of course I'm going to get this. This is cheap, even with the shipping compared to other stuff. So what, what I ended up doing is I split a box with a friend, right? On the Kickstarter. I didn't even look at stretch goals. This was my first Kickstarter pledge ever of anything. And I was like, yeah, sure. Let's get them. And if the game is cool, I'll try it out. If it sucks, well, I guess I'll just use the minis for Lord of the Rings proxies. That was basically what I was thinking at the time. And then I'm part of a miniature game club in, in Sao Paulo called like Clube Paulista Juwar Games. Just a shout out to my gaming club. And it's basically just a bunch of guys who share an office space where we put gaming tables and terrain and so on. Right. And well, the two game developers that were doing the game dev stuff for the Kickstarter, they were, um, sorry, they were looking for people to play test. They were looking for basically Guinea pigs and they found us, right? Well, one of them, the developers is like very old school miniatures and like RPGs. Cause these things are kind of related to this ecosystem, right? From the Sao Paulo scene, let's say. And so he knew about our club and he started going there and saying like, Hey, we want people to play test. And I was like, wait, I bought this. I'll play test. Yeah. Yeah. For sure. And, and then I started having a lot of fun and I, at the time had just, uh, lost my job. So I had a lot of time in my hands and like my recession money. So I wasn't in a rush to find anything. And so, yeah, I was doing a lot of play tests and they're like, wait, we like your feedback. We think a lot of the stuff you're saying is cool. Do you want to come work with us and we'll kind of train you from the ground up? And I was like, yeah, let's do it. And I had at that very day when they made me that offer, I had actually signed a contract to become like an English teacher. And I went back to the school, signed the contract. They got super pissed. Cause it was like a week before. Yeah. And so, yeah, that that's my end of the story. And when I got there, Starks and Lannisters were basically done and they were play testing neutrals. And when, when I was, so I remember changes to the neutral stack that actually got published, like of stuff that I said as a play tester. And I, at the time I was like, super proud. I was like, Oh, I found this infinite loop. And six months later you find out that there's like a hundred of those when something new comes out and you just, and yeah, as soon as I joined, we went straight to free folk and [00:21:12] Speaker 1: nights watch starter sets. The good stuff, right? You know, and I think something that's interesting, [00:21:18] Speaker 2: like a behind the scene thing is that as soon as I joined, they showed me and they said like, look, all we have the next, we meaning basically Michael showing me this document, right? Um, the next three years kind of planned out, right? So there aren't like necessarily the complete game design of all these factions, but there's like what we want them to be. Here's the next year of stuff, but focus on these aspects. And I didn't, they didn't just like switch the developers straight to me like, Oh, this completely inexperienced guy and let's go. No, like the previous two developers, they, they took the time to train me. There was this transition. They taught me how to write reports that Michael would appreciate. And I remember every single day I had to write Michael these very, very detailed reports until eventually we build up trust and the reports can be a little more summarized and, and so on. [00:22:22] Speaker 1: When you did the Kickstarter fulfill yet then? So you, you were designing before fulfilled. [00:22:27] Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah. We were doing nights watch free folk way before I got my stuff. [00:22:30] Michael: Yeah. That's because, because speaking on that, you know, the, the, we initially, the roadmap was like, okay, we had all this stuff planned out, but we have to plan for it. Is the game going to be success? Is it going to last, you know, a couple of years? What is it? So we had the big master plan where it's like, okay, idealized. This is if the game goes on add in venom. You know, this is the, all the factions we would have eventually released. But the initial launch was focused on Starks, Lancers and neutrals with nights watch and free folk being the next major releases coming out. Once the game had retail, one of the things that I was very meticulous about was we had learned a lot of mistakes from Wrath of Kings where we had released a bunch of stuff up front, the Kickstarter, and that actually killed the game at retail because everyone had everything. Stores didn't want to carry it because, okay, the first year and a half, two years of releases, everyone already has. So why am I picking up this game? So the idea was that the Kickstarter was supposed to be a very small scoped, limited project with what it was releasing, basically using it as a foundation to get the game out there and, you know, publicly, you know, in into being played, but not with anything super major out there. Another very specific thing that I, I fought against was that the inclusion of exclusives and whatnot, because CMON is known for doing exclusives. And I was very particular that that will kill a war game. So we did alternative sculpts and things like that. And unfortunately, some things did get have to sacrifice to the older exclusivity that the 3d terrain, which that was kind of a last minute change. Again, this I didn't pull that out, but I have that too. Listen, there's a lot of back and forth that happened during that time about like, you know, okay, suddenly we just get, you know, this is how it works in any type of field, but you know, stuff just gets told to us. This is how it's going to be. And that's kind of now that I'm working [00:24:16] Speaker 1: in the industry myself, but on the not design side, there's that always that tension point, right. Where, you know, who's driving the ship, is it design or is it sales? And sometimes you go and you're like, like, you know, the Kickstarter did quite well. Um, there can be times and stuff like that happens. And you come to design team, you say, Hey, great guys. We need more. Well, [00:24:37] Michael: have you had that interplay? Oh, absolutely. So the Kickstarter did well at the end, but you know, we had that mid campaign slump, like no one ever remembers when that happens in the popular campaigns, but it happens in most of them, especially when you back in the day, you're running full 31 day campaigns versus cutting them down. Um, cat cameo, uh, there, by the way, so we're going to move you down here. Okay. Um, yeah. So that was, that was something that developed there was like, um, I know a lot of people are going to, uh, get fun with this comment, but like neutrals were not initially a faction. That was something that was brought up as an idea during the Kickstarter and then kind of pushed into like, well, can't you just do it? And even brought up, not from the design [00:25:25] Speaker 1: teams, right? Yes. Oh, this resonates. Well, the thing is there, there's a lot of things where, [00:25:30] Michael: you know, someone will read a bunch of comments over and over again and see like, oh, that's, that's, that's, that seems like a good idea. And then not thinking about, I always have a mandate that, you know, sorry, a state, a statement that it is very easy to assign work to other people when you're not doing it. And so that's unfortunately the nature of any creative industry is that you have people that say, well, can't you just do it? You know, it doesn't seem like it's that complicated. I'm like, okay. I mean, I guess it's really easy for someone in sales or marketing or whatnot to, you know, like that's like, that's like, that feels like it's me saying, Hey, can't you just go sell more of this? Like, come on. It's not, it's not that hard. Just sell more, make more money guys, you know? But, um, and again, I don't mean to speak ill of anyone there because everyone is trying to make this the best they can, but there are a bunch of compromises that happen where it's like, okay, I don't necessarily think this is the best idea, but for the sake of what we're doing now, we will do it. So like, that's how neutrals came across as having a faction. That was something that [00:26:27] Speaker 2: was decided during the Kickstarter. I want to add a hot take there. I'm sorry, but through my, after 10 years in game design, I think I'm allowed this one hot take, but the game, it would be better off without neutrals. Neutrals and mercenary things complicate game balance and muddle up faction identity to a point where it's just not worth it. There are a lot of good points to neutrals, but the negatives outweigh any positives that might happen. [00:26:59] Speaker 1: Yeah. And that's hearing this then in the comments of Fabio wants to, didn't want you to have your neutral army. He dislikes you with a passion. No, I, I'll tag onto that too. I agree. I agree a hundred [00:27:11] Michael: percent of that. Yep. Sure. Sure. I agree with, I agree with Fabio that the players were wrong. [00:27:17] Speaker 1: Thank you. Wasn't that the, uh, I feel like you, I, cause I remember the Kickstarter was like, we saw the, uh, the bastards girls with such a cool unit, but then it was like the Michael Bolton in quotes, like card art. Like I always associated you with that thing. Sure. Like I thought you guys were the champions. [00:27:35] Michael: The designers, sorry, the, the, the, the, the, the, the artist, the, we wanted to incorporate a bunch of the staff in there, but we didn't necessarily get to pick what we were. Um, you know, but it was also, we're trying to make a spread there. Like one of the lead producers, Guile, he's in Lannisters. Um, Jim Ludwig is a sworn sword captain. Yeah. I don't want to stack everyone in the same faction. So I was like, we, no, keep in mind, we had neutrals. That was a thing. That's no issue [00:27:59] Speaker 2: there. It was more so me in the box. I know. Yeah, exactly. I'm not, I wasn't against neutrals from the get go, but as I matured as a professional, if I had to have a do over, I would not include them at least not in this way. Like Boltons, I know this sounds crazy, but they could either easily have been either just Starks or Lannisters. Well, so, so fun fact, fun fact around that, right. That, that was the, [00:28:24] Michael: that was one of the initial ideas. But again, you were, there's a thing though, about you, you're trying to future-proof things that might not exist. And so that's something that, you know, you also have to gauge there as well, because you know, like one of the, first off, there was no, originally there was no neutrals deck. You could only play them in certain, not in certain factions, but like this, this kid is just being a nightmare. I'm sorry. I'm sure the, I'm sure the, the viewers will love it. And if you're not listening, if you're not watching, then you're missing out. Um, literally on him. Yes. Um, neutrals, you know, we were going to have neutral units to begin with, but the fact of playing a neutral army, that was something that was, uh, I will say pushed for during the Kickstarter, not just by, well, it got pushed by the comments section. And then that in turn was like the people reading that reported it. And then all of a sudden we get, you know, word from on high comes down and says like, Hey, can you make this work? And we're like, well, yes, but that also might lead to unforeseen issues down the line. Once this thing actually starts going, but secondary effects, who cares about secondary effects? Well, when, when the primary concern is getting a launch going, you worry about, you worry about what happens when the rockets in space, once you get to space, right? That that's how, that's how NASA works, right? It's just like, just get it up there. [00:29:43] Speaker 2: That's, that's kind of seem on a bone there as well, because that just comes to show that they actually do read the comments and they do try to work it out. Right. Because a lot of people do complain about that. And I think that's unfair on marketing team and the operations team that is behind the campaign, right? They get different goals, right? And they do take things to heart. [00:30:07] Speaker 1: Yeah. Right. And their challenge, right? As a, I do that now for my company and it's like, uh, lots of people have complaints or feedback and it's like, you know, how do you separate out the noise? And usually people are good at identifying problems, but really not so great at giving solutions. Uh, and you know, different goal, right? You got to make money generate, you want that bar to go up. So you're trying to build like an evergreen game. [00:30:30] Michael: Right. And actually I've got two little side stories. They're actually talking specifically about that topic is one, when we were very late into the design process, almost ready for launch, all of a sudden, one of our owners just, uh, comes into the office and goes like, I have some news I just got from insider stuff. And I cannot talk about this very hush hush. But, uh, this is the new star Wars game coming out, um, roughly the same time as our game called Legion. And we see the early prototype, uh, sorry, the, the, the, uh, stuff from that. Not like we actually had like, you know, not like he opened a briefcase and was like, this is secret hush hush stuff, but you know, just the stuff that was publicly available or internally available for like play tests and everything there that not internally to the company. Like, obviously I'm saying like the, the right, you get what I'm saying. There was no corporate espionage going on. This is stuff that [00:31:20] Speaker 1: was available in dome. Yeah. We can't really see an internet, right? Yes. It's like, no, we didn't, [00:31:24] Michael: we didn't infiltrate. Like we got the files, hack them, enhance. But so there was a lot of concern there about, is there going to be overlap? Are these games similar? And it was like, well, no, they're not actually similar at all, aside from both being miniature games. Also, they're not even nearly the same setting. Like this is futuristic versus, you know, fantasy. These can coexist, but there was a big, like kind of scare internally just because like, can the market support these mini miniature games and what's this going to affect us with? So that was something that was factored in, but honestly, design and dev, we were not worried about that because we didn't see any overlap. And if the products are going to overlap, well, there was any product had just as strong a chance of doing that if it launched at the same time. So whatever. The thing I will say to that note is that like, there have been literally dozens of games, miniature games specifically that have come out around the same time or afterwards in the nearly 10 years, the game has been out that have not survived because the average lifespan for a new miniature game for the last 15 years has been on average about a year. Most of them don't even launch like to any big fanfare. They come out, flash in the pan, and then they die. I can think of the two other major competitors in that space at the time, and I guarantee you, no one even remembers them. And I'm not going to mention them because that feels almost kind of bad. And I'm not here to like bad-mouthing thing. Um, the other topic there, which speaking about like decisions made, you know, for, you know, because that's the thing at the end of the day, this is a product that is for sale for money. If it's not making any money, then it can't sustain itself. Doesn't matter how nice the game is and everything. I love Dark Age. I love Wrath of Kings. They were not generating the company revenue worth keeping up. So they got killed. It wasn't a flaw of the game systems. I love both of those. Um, but you know, it's a business at the end. One of the, I, I, okay, this is a very tricky thing for me to say. And so I want to, I want to vocalize this in a way that is not going to sound like I am bad-mouthing anyone. That's not true. The internet's forever. Um, but one of the things that happened just before the Kickstarter, which, uh, was, uh, so I was, Eric Lang was visiting the office because we were getting ready for CIMON expo that year where we were going to basically have a big push for the game and everything. And he and I got pulled into a call with, uh, our, the company owners, some specific individuals. And they said like, yeah, okay, we're gonna, you know, we're gonna have the big push for the game at expo and everything. We're about to do the big launch. And also, um, we're going to put Eric's name on the box of yours because of all the assistance that he has done with the game. And this was a little confusing to both of us because while he had overseen design and dev, and like that means he oversaw every product and had involvement in every one of them, he very specifically was like making board games at the time like death may die and rising sun. And actually, I think that was blood rage back then. I don't remember, but all of that, the board game kind of mini division we had was its own kind of unit. And he very much was explaining that. And they were very much like, okay, that's nice to say that, but we want his name on the box. Anyone who knows any common sense here knows that like, okay, this is a big push because you are, you've been trying to tap into board game crowd and you have one of those prolific board game makers of all time here. Okay. That's one of those things that potentially sounds negative to anyone hearing that. And it kind of is. Um, but that's one of those like kind of corporate things that was just like, okay, we want the brand recognition there. No one else agreed that that was the proper thing to do. And, you know, for various reasons, having said that, you know, Eric was like, okay, well then I'm going to force to have more direct involvement on this because, you know, he was one of the biggest advocates and pushers to going like, no credit is where it's due. You know, this, this is, this has to be what is, but then you have the entirety of the corporate weight pushing down on there. You know, that was something that created a lot of friction, especially with myself because, you know, uh, you know, that, that was how things were. Um, but anyway, [00:35:31] Speaker 1: I mean, I remember that early expo, I think you guys had a panel, right? And that was just like the different, you know, questions getting fielded. I feel like you ended up taking a lot, you went a lot of the depth and you had a lot of the, uh, uh, responses there. [00:35:42] Michael: Uh, I won't comment on things like that. I will say that, you know, uh, everyone who was involved, uh, there was doing exactly what they could. And, you know, that's how we were moving forward. But anyway, let's, let's move away from that topic and move back on to now Fabio has joined us and, you know, how, how that, that the brand new dawn has happened. [00:36:01] Speaker 1: So Fabio, I think, I think it's safe to say Michael is a bit of a character. Uh, I've always enjoyed him coming to the podcast here. What was your first impression? Like, when did you first meet him? Was it, or was it mostly like email communication, sending files? You said you had to do it like his way. What was that first? Like, so I was, I was briefed, right? [00:36:21] Speaker 2: Okay. I saw Michael the first time in the, in an online call interview with him, Eric Lang, the, the, um, Brazilian manager at the time for game design was Fel Bahus and, and a couple of other people, but they, they, like, I was interviewed. They asked me a couple of things. I think this is an interview I'll never forget because I was already a fan of both their works. So it was interesting for me, right? Like meeting people that you admire like face to face. And, but then after that, most of my communication with Michael was through email or just like voice calls in, in the first few months. And when, and they told me like, look, Michael is very meticulous with, with game design, right. And he won't just like, if you just say something is bad and you want to change it, he'll ask like, why? Where's the evidence? Um, what is your thought process? And, and so you need to build up a case if you want to do something, otherwise you're just trying to change his game design, [00:37:34] Michael: right? Well, the opposite of that is also true. You just say something is good. That's equally as [00:37:38] Speaker 2: useful. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's because usually most of the time the developer is, good point, good point, Michael. The developer is trying to find usually like the issues, right. And then we end up like brushing over the good things, but he is completely right. Things that are good also have to be reported. Like this is doing stellar, not like meaning that it's strong. I mean that it's engaging to the players and, and so on. And so by doing that also, I think it started helping me build up chops of, um, how do you say running play test, right? I think this is a fundamental aspect of game design is watching people play. And if you play yourself, there's a lot of value gained, but watching people play brings a whole different dimension to it. And if you don't have a regular play test where the game designer is watching and it's like, well, even six years in song of ice and fire, I know we'll get there, but you have to watch people play. Oh, but now the core rules are already, you know, your target audience. Do you still need to test with newcomers and so on? Yes. Yes, you do. It's really important. Right. And that's the kind of thing that I started learning by writing up these reports for Michael and so on a couple of months later, he did come to Brazil and he stayed there for how long, like a month to three months. I don't know. [00:39:05] Michael: It was a while. It became commonplace after a while, once we had established that the Brazil office was our primary office, that I would end up traveling to Brazil, staying for between 20 to 40 days at a time and then coming back to the U S and that became just life for the next few years. I also want to say something, just jump in here about this as well. I am very meticulous when it comes to reporting feedback and getting things of that nature. But I also feel that there's this like parasocial thing out there where people go like, you know, it seems like you just be like some kind of a tyrant to listen to. And like, no, well, at least I don't think so. But of course, I'm sure that's what every dictator says, but point is, is that, um, I, that's a two way street. I expect a lot of the people that are doing this, but it's, if you discard their feedback, that's equally, if not as worse, I worked with people above me and around me that basically, if you criticize something, I have, uh, I've literally heard in playtest sessions, listening to another lead designer, say, tell a play tester, okay, I hear what you're saying, but you're wrong. I'm like, what, what? No, you can't ever say that. You can disagree with what they're saying, but you should never just think they're wrong that that's straight ego talking. And there's a difference between listening to constructive feedback and making the decision in the day and just not listening to what people are saying. And I feel it's very easy for people to interpret some of the directness that I say as to being, oh, I don't listen to anyone. And you know, again, I'm, Fabio has no, has nothing to gain or lose by whatever he says at this point. So I will leave that up to him. Not that he's going to convince anyone or I'm expecting that, but you know, that's, that's something that I've had to deal with over the years is a bunch of, you know, basically you see people online that are just making these parasocial assumptions about how our process works. And that goes for everyone involved. Fabio, you know, you, you have been on the side of that as well. We all have where it's like, you know, people are going, oh, well, clearly things must work this way because of this 20 minute interview I watched. [00:41:08] Speaker 1: So, right. Well, can't you, uh, cut out the social component at all? Why play test? Can't you just balance it off of statistics? If we have the community gather stats, uh, is that a method to approach play testing? [00:41:20] Speaker 2: So, um, I'll start off by just like confirming, right? I have nothing to gain by saying this and Michael listens to ideas and not who says them. Right. And I think that's a good thing where I was able to, by using this method, achieve better results. Right. That's what I believe. And that's how I started working with as well. And I also think that respect is kind of earned, not given. So if, it doesn't matter if you're just this notorious person or if you're brand new, it matters on the content of what you're saying. Right. And so, yeah, I think that, um, of course, in a company, there's like, uh, job positions and everyone is someone else's boss or everyone has a boss. Um, but that's usually more related to like workflow and vision and not by the execution of the process and in and of itself. Right. Well, at least that's, that's how I feel. But the other thing is why not just crunch the numbers, right? Why not just use statistics? Um, this is a fun fact. I actually did one year of unis of like pure math. I was going to become a math teacher. And so I'm pretty good with statistics. For just like, in general, of course, I'm not nowadays, I don't use any advanced stuff, right? You don't need it for just like drawing cards and rolling dice. It's pretty simple. Um, but anyways, you can do that. And sometimes the, what happens is the player perception is more important than the math itself. And I know that sounds counterintuitive, but sometimes the math is everything right, but people do not perceive that. I'll, I'll even give you an example. Um, I was developing, uh, designing, I mean, Song of Ice and Fire Tactics, and we were creating the combat system and I was going to create this dice rolling system. And there's a moment in the game design at CMON where we used to stop and hand off the project for like a month to someone else. And it's not that they're doing your stuff. They're just taking a fresh look. And we, um, I passed it over to Chris Ham and Travis Chance, which are amazing game designers. And Ham specifically has a very good look for numbers, but the, both of them were telling me, look, these guys, uh, he's a poker card shark, by the way. [00:44:01] Michael: Oh, he, he literally has made his like previous income on like hustling poker games sometimes with [00:44:09] Speaker 2: mafia people. I shouldn't have said that, but okay. And so allegedly, allegedly, exactly. That's it. To me, that's all hearsay. Uh, but, um, I, anyways, their feedback was the, this dice rolling system is too swingy. And I was like, Nope, it's not. I've got the numbers to prove it. I actually ran this through. Like I have a friend who's a software engineer and he helped me build this dice rolling software to guarantee me that the numerical spread was correct. And everything is like, it's perfectly balanced. I have an exact system. And in the end, the logic was, this is so complex that you can like, your brain cannot do that judgment call in a second. And in a miniature game, it's not about like, like I said, it's about calling the shots on the battlefield. That's what's cool. The dice rolling is secondary. It's abstracting that plastic models cannot swing, right? That's basically why we roll dice. And, and they said like, it doesn't matter if it's balanced, if it seems swingy. And I was like, huh, that makes a lot of sense. All right. Uh, and so going back to your question, you need not only, you need newcomers to play to know if the game is still accessible, because the more expansions you make in a game, the more confusing it can get, right? Yeah. Then you also need veteran players to keep playing. So you can see the thought process of people who are taking the meta into consideration. And many times things that are balanced on paper and that the numbers are correct, and you can run as many computer simulations as you want, don't have for, in a song of ice and fire, the bluffing mechanism of, but he may have counterplot. [00:46:10] Speaker ?: Mm-hmm. [00:46:10] Speaker 2: Right. How do you run those numbers of, you may have counterplot and you never actually drew it, but your opponent is taking that into consideration based on your decisions. And this whole meta mind game that happens when you have hidden information, um, um, worker placement and prioritizing of activations. And it's not just about the dice rolls. So you need play testing. [00:46:42] Michael: Yep. What you would end up seeing just to summarize what Fabio said is that like, you can have a math exercise and the math exercise can work, but is it fun? That's, that's where the issue is. And I feel that, you know, that fun is where that's an important and often overlooked thing where I've had a lot of designs to get submitted to us. That's like, yeah, this works, but is it fun? Did you, did you forget, you know, that that was what you're trying to set up and do? And player perception is by far the biggest determining factor in things, because like in any game you watch, the competitive atmosphere is usually vastly different than the common atmosphere that you'll see. Um, this is any CCG, Magic the Gathering competitive play League of Legends online play completely different than if you're watching just people playing the game. And you know, if you, because like anyone who's basically talking about the game in depth online, okay, you're probably in the top, I want to say 20%, but it might be closer to 10% of what your actual customer base is versus the ones who are just, they just go and play the game at their local store, or they just played at home. The concept of, you know, they might enter a tournament maybe a couple times a year, maybe, maybe, but really they're just like, oh, I bought this because it's cool. And then I just play it whenever it's out. That's by far, by far the bulk majority of your sales and everything has ever big you see a competitive scene for any game that is usually a drop in the bucket compared to the overall market base. And that has to be taken into consideration. You know, I've seen some games in the past that have hyper-focused on just the competitive side of things and tried to balance their game only around the competitive side of things. And that led to almost killing the game or outright killing the game in some cases. I'm not going to name names here and everything, but it's a, you know, the people that know what I'm talking about. Yeah, right. Sure. [00:48:30] Speaker 1: But I hear the arguments, right? A lot of times it's like, well, the competitive players are the ones who make the content as well and they drive the awareness. And yes, I think I've, you know, I've come to understand too is NC or a different game. That's like, oh yeah, that's, that's not the case. It's such a huge pool. But that being said, who did you originally try to pitch the game to? Was that you as marketing or you as design? And I'm going to give an example is initially, uh, you had things like, uh, panic where you could take a tremendous amount of, uh, casualties or you lose a lot of units, uh, because it was much more swingy, right? And so there's a big, like, oh my gosh moments. And then it kind of got paired down to D3, a little bit more controlled. And sometimes it can feel like that there's a, like the people that want like the big splashy moments. And then you want the people that want to like fine tune it down to more of like a chess or checkers, like get all the variables out. And those can maybe be mapped to like casual competitive. Um, so like, did you see the game drifting in one of those ways from the start? [00:49:29] Speaker 2: Well, I have something to say there. The panic change, for example, from splashy to more predictable is a thing about the number of game design levers you have available to you. And panic is something we wanted to play more with. And being splashy, there's only so many game mechanics you can add into the game and so many abilities. So by, by toning it down and modulating it, we were able to create a bunch of panic effects that could never exist before. So that was actually, and then that makes the wow moments, right? Because before the only interesting and cool thing about it was if you hit a big number. Now it's cool that you get to play a card with it. So it's a shift. And I don't think it has anything to do with the fun of the splashiness because now the splashiness is just relocated. It's not even diluted. [00:50:27] Michael: So I will, I don't disagree with that. I think that what I'm going to say will might sound like it's contradictory a bit to that, but that's not the case. At least that's not my intent. So once again, we're talking target audiences, um, when the game was initially launched, you know, we were told to make a war game and then we were told to make it more board gamey and then we're told to make it as much of a board game as we can. Then we pushed back toward the center. Again, all these things happened during the early stages of the process. The point is that we were trying to make an accessible war game was what we finally ended up settling on. Um, those big swing moments, you can have them fairly common in basically a mirror trash board games. Euro games have nothing like that because, you know, it's all monocles and top hats, but, um, the fact that the game has dice offensive, uh, anyway, so those big swingy moments there were part of the charm. And that was actually something that Jim Lugwood loved was that everything was super lethal. And one of the initial design things about the game was that your panic was supposed to be the biggest source of damage in the game because recreating more medieval warfare. It wasn't about killing people to a man. It was about hitting them hard enough where everyone else was like, holy crap. And then ran away, you know, so everyone looks back and he was like, man, panic was the biggest source of damage. Like, yes, by design, that was exactly how it's supposed to be. And the game was supposed to be super lethal because it was supposed to be just super quick and able to be, you know, you play it, the game's done in less than an hour. And yes, it was super brutal, but then you just play another game because at the time and actually up until this day, you know, your average war game is taking three to four plus hours. The thing is, is that, and that was very much catered to being pushing more toward the board game crowd who like doesn't want to spend necessarily all day playing a single game, even though board gamers actually will do that. They, you know, that's the perceptions. They don't want to feel like they're doing that. They want everything to feel very tight. But anyway, as the game's lifespan went on very quickly, it was very much proven that, okay, no, war gamers, the primary audience for this game, not that hybrid war gamer board gamer that you guys were trying to target that doesn't really, I mean, sure they exist, but they're not like a huge demographic. There's not like a huge amount of board gamers that are just waiting to break into the miniature game crowd, you know? Um, but that was, uh, that was one of the reasons that you see things start getting a little bit more granular and smoothed out over the time when the game was released because the target demographic was shifted ironically back to what it initially was supposed to be targeted toward. But, um, that's, that's a whole separate thing. Um, uh, so another example of that being is like when we do, we're doing our marketing for the initial Kickstarter. Um, they were trying to treat it, uh, as if they were trying to sell a traditional board game. And that was something that was a little frustrating to deal with as well, because, you know, we had, you know, basically we had a system at the time for how we were doing Kickstarters, but they're all board game related. And, you know, people like, like, well, this system's worked every single time. Why would it not work for this? I'm like, guys, because this is not a board game. This is a war game. Well, yeah, it's, it's a war game board game. Like, no, no, no, it's not. So for example, as a company, you know, we didn't reach out to what I feel was a large number of the war game channels at the time. Instead, we were using standard board game avenues. Like our initial video was done by Rodney Smith of watch it played. And it was treated like a board game. And a lot of people walked away from that video, even though it was perfectly explained, and it was very well done in the, in the quality that only Rodney Smith can do because he's amazing at it. But people walked away and like, so you just push trades against each other. And it's like, that's the core line base rules. But that's like the most simple, that's like saying, you know, oh, you know, oh, we'll fly blood rage. Oh, you just, you're just moving guys around a map. Like, well, the very most like basic level, sure. But that's not the game. So there was a lot of like kind of growing pains that happened there. And also just again, decisions that were made due to limited time resources, or just, you know, whatever other factors came into play that, you know, were a lot of back in hurdles, you know, in the first few years of the game. And also just getting learning what the market is for this game and then trying to generally smooth it and push it toward that direction. [00:54:42] Speaker 1: I'll, I'll even jump in on this. My first, this was so unusual to me that the first A Song of Ice and Fire tournament I played at a convention, they provided the models for me. I went to PAX Unplugged and they were like, yeah, but we'll have stuff for you. And you showed up and you had a pre-made army and you just got aside and you just played what you had. And I think it was right around when like Night's Watch came out, it was at PAX Unplugged. And I was like, great, we've been playing all these games locally. But I was like, I guess I don't, I brought my stuff, but like I didn't leave the hotel with it. And then you just showed up and you're like, I hope I got the right side. Because like you're like, those, the Night's Watch were pretty strong at the start. And the first time you hit a sworn brother unit and then they started like, you know, critical hitting you back. But I was like, man, like, I don't think, and maybe other war games do this and I just don't know, but I'd never been in that sort of situation. And I was like, it really is, uh, in this instance, feeling very board gaming. That was done entirely as I remember that entire [00:55:38] Michael: year was the marketing effort was that they were trying to go to the board game conventions and lure in that, not lure in like, okay, yes, get them, get them in the precious money. But you get the, that crowd. That's like, they've never touched a board game before. Let's show you how accessible this is. And the thing is that was always one of the mandates. Again, we weren't trying to make a hybrid board game, but we're trying to make it accessible. I know that keep coming back to that word, but that was the idea was like, listen, we know that the existing stuff on the market is super intimidating. You've got to buy stuff, learn literally a 150 page rule book, put these things together. It's a hobby. We're trying to make, we're trying to remove as many barriers as we can to get you to just taking this box, putting it on the table and playing stuff like any of those boxes behind you. The idea was that you can literally take that starter box that you have behind you, Chase, and then you play a game. And then after that, you're like, man, you know, I want to try something new. You go to a shelf, you pick up another box of, you know, the house Mormont, she bears open it up and there's boom, around the table, no setup or anything. Just go. [00:56:36] Speaker 1: It's kind of like that X-Wing crowd, right? Except instead of having to chase the card packs to get all the upgrades, I felt like you guys were much better about keeping the upgrades a little bit more contained. I mean, there's rare exceptions. [00:56:47] Michael: This falls for, you know, from even back when I was doing Dark Age and Wrath of Kings, because I've always been an advocate of free rules and updates online because we're making a game. We're not in here to sell card packs. We're not in here to sell books. You know, it turns out there's a very successful book series based on this game already that you might have heard of, which was funny during the Kickstarter. People were asking us to make lore books. And it's like, guess, guess what? We've got good news for you. [00:57:12] Speaker 1: Although we do have, where is it? I've got it somewhere back here. There we go. You have my, thank goodness this rule book stayed up to date. Oh, look, I think you signed it in here. Look at that. Thank you, Michael. [00:57:22] Michael: Yes, the deluxe rule book. [00:57:24] Speaker 2: Oh, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. I'm going to get mine. Just a sec. [00:57:27] Speaker 1: Oh, okay. Here we go. I just, where was that? Hopefully that camera didn't pick it up. There's a little bit of dust on mine. [00:57:33] Michael: Well, it's okay, Chase. I barely have any of my stuff because of my globe-hopping situations that happened during COVID because like I, when I lived in Atlanta, well, that's where I lived for like majority of my life. And then my girlfriend at the time was in Vancouver, Canada. I went up to visit her when COVID started just to kind of ride things out a bit. You know, it's like, it was going to be just a couple of weeks and then the border shut down. And then five years later, I was still there. So I just kind of had to remotely move my stuff out. And a lot of that stuff, I went back to visit one of my friends who had moved my stuff out and he just furnished his house of all my previous stuff. And so I just let him have most of the, uh, the gaming related stuff I had because I, yeah, it was not worth moving. [00:58:11] Speaker 2: I've got Michael's Leo and Fabio Tola, which are the first OG developers here. [00:58:18] Speaker 1: And are you going to sign it yourself as well now, Fabio? Do you put your name in there? [00:58:22] Speaker 2: Actually, I want to get the, um, the signature of Felipe Galeno, who was the last developer ever for a song of us in fire. And, um, cause, and then I also want to get eventually Eric Langs, but it's like, I sometimes meet him at conventions at Gen Con or whatever, but it's like, when will I take my book? Stop working in my, you know, stop doing my shift to try to find Eric was like the most sought after person in Gen Con. And I think it's going to be very, [00:58:58] Speaker 1: very hard to get that signature. Now I bought it, so I can't really talk, you know, I can't throw shade at like these exclusives when it's like, well, it worked. I think that was a new tier on the Kickstarter. I've got some of these, uh, the, uh, I don't, these were like exclusive minis, but the thing is they're just like a, a metallic sort of color. Uh, I never opened because for a lot of the stuff you want to paint your minis. And I got this cool ultimate sculpt that I want to paint. It's like, well, they're there. What makes them special is they're, uh, the amount of people you had buying [00:59:27] Michael: those stripping the metallics off and then repainting them, which I, I just do not understand because like, this is literally a limited edition item, but they're like, I just care about painting [00:59:36] Speaker 2: it. So they would literally buy those. The metallic effect is bad for the primer to stick. And so it's not actually good for painting either. So, but why would you paint those things like that? But anyway, [00:59:46] Speaker 1: it's war gaming, not board gaming, but it definitely had that Kickstarter board game [00:59:52] Michael: Cmon quality. I still think actually come to think of it. I think this is one of the few things that I had kept somewhere was the, the zero zero one, uh, metallic gold high sinitial. I think I, I, I have that. If it's not, then it might be still just in my friend's house down in Georgia, [01:00:08] Speaker 1: and he might just be sitting on that somewhere. That was such an OP character. I can't believe you printed it that way. And, and I've ever told you at all the games I've won in a song of ice and fire [01:00:17] Michael: because of that. Yeah. The, the, the weird random crowd that thought that that was supposed to be a serious thing that literally says, just like, you just decide that you win. I, I just, it, every so often, every few years, Fabio, you remember this too, that we would just see a post online or something going like, how is this not busted? Like how, how, how, how are you taking this seriously? [01:00:38] Speaker 1: And I guess maybe that's ties it back to the community. Did you like, what was the experience of the community? Because as, uh, so, you know, my story was into war gaming. I took a break for many years. I got back in being like, Oh, you know what? I'd love to go back to war gaming, but I don't really have a time and investment. So I actually bought, uh, Simon's, uh, zombie side, dark plage, plague. And I was like, Oh, I'll paint these minis. And then this Kickstarter came out. Uh, I remember being on vacation and being like, you know, it was like after watching, maybe it was the episode in game of Thrones or like the, the Dothraki arrived with the dragon in Westeros. And it was like, towards the end of the campaign. And I was like, Oh, this is so good. I'm going to bump my pledge up. It brought me back into, into war gaming. Um, but, uh, in that case, then it was like, wow. Okay. What's that? What does this community feel like? Like, what does it feel like in a lifestyle game to be part of the song of bison fire community? So it was super small, but you guys were so accessible. [01:01:32] Michael: Well, I want to say something about that, by the way. And luckily there's probably no way we would get in trouble with this still. But, uh, at the time in the company, we, there was a very much a gag order about what anyone is allowed to say publicly for any of our stuff. Um, so this is something that [01:01:49] Speaker 2: people ever you're any game period, anything on BGG on Facebook, anywhere. Yep. So anything that you saw [01:01:58] Michael: online was very much like a, uh, don't ask, don't tell no one saw anything situation because, uh, again, this was just company policy. We don't make it, we don't decide it, but we are held by it where we could get into some serious issues where we were just even casually chatty about our stuff online, because that I'm not gonna get into the details, but I guess someone decided that that would create a perception or someone might say the wrong thing and that would be a problem. But either way, that, that was just, that was something that we were very stringently held to, which was outside of official communication where, you know, like the podcast or the videos and everything we, we cannot be just casually talking online. Makes sense. I think I do remember like your, your name popping [01:02:48] Speaker 1: up a lot on the Kickstarter comments. Oh, the Kickstarter comments. Yes, that was fine because [01:02:52] Michael: those were heavily monitored. I'm saying like out in the wild to like, you know, we can't, you know, anytime like we were speaking with you, for example, anytime we had to get that, you know, uh, okay greenlit by marketing and whatnot. And, you know, of course we were told like, granted we had done this, like Fabio and myself had spoken to you and other outlets so many times that we were kind of like, okay, we, we know what we can and can't say. But you know, I, I will say this in general, CIMON over the years, you know, people, they complained about like the, the lack of communication that comes from like designers and devs, which first off, I don't think that that should be an expectation. If they, if, if designers and devs don't want to interact with the community, that's fine. But in this specific case, uh, it was, they can't, and that was true for all of our, all of our products and lines period. Cause we, we definitely include Fabio and myself included worked with tons of people like design and the design and dev department that would have loved to go out there and just be super chatty about what they're working on. Cause everyone was genuinely excited about stuff, but we were, we were basic gag orders. Well, I guess then from the outside, [01:03:58] Speaker 1: it looked like, I remember, I guess it was a small Facebook community at the start. Uh, and I remember you were, you guys would comment in there periodically. I feel like you would drop a card every once in a while, which sounds like it was maybe orchestrated from on high. No, no, no, those, those, those were just us going rogue that whole spiel. And you're just like, all right. What, what I kind of understood [01:04:19] Speaker 2: was that the whole company was good at making board games. They didn't know much about miniature war games, about from like many apart from like manufacturing and really important stuff as well. Right. But so we, we were kind of left aside by marketing and all these other, um, departments that are crucial for a company. And then in a way, marketing gave us like, um, how do you say this? They turned a, they're turned a blind eye. They turned a blind eye. Thank you. Because we were actually helping them out. And it's like, well, these guys are on Facebook. The higher ups are not necessarily watching these little details. And this is actually engaging the community, helping everyone. So why would they sabotage themselves? So Song of Ice and Fire had this weird, don't ask, don't tell, like Michael said, exception for this gag order. And that, and honestly, I think that just the little bit of work we did there helped a lot build the community and have passed this image of us being approachable. Like, uh, a lot of people send me to this day, like direct messages on social media to like, um, just chat or ask about rules or just like, thank me for the game or, or something like that. And, and I try to maintain, like, if, if I haven't answered you either, like Instagram said, you're like a spam message and I never checked those or something like that. Right. It wasn't me actively like, I'm not going to reply this guy. And also I believe that since we were engaging the community, especially like Michael with his podcast, his Facebook drops and, and spoilers and so on. And I think that that was actually pretty cool, at least for me, because I was super new into this universe of game design and getting that positive feedback really makes you want to do more. And, and you go to work, like I'm going to give my best because like people enjoy this and I don't want to rip anyone off. And it's not just on me, right? I'm just like this junior developer. [01:06:38] Speaker 1: You believe in the process. You believe in the product. [01:06:40] Speaker 2: Exactly. And I think that that helps a lot. And I know. Yeah. Like I've been in projects that I don't believe in and it's night and day. Even if you say like, I'm going to do my best just because you're not into it. It really slows down the process. [01:06:57] Speaker 1: Well, I think that was probably three things for me that number one, that's what kept me engaged was, uh, you know, so I started off, I was just like, I love this game. I want to find someone to play with me. Uh, and the irony of it was, I didn't think I was going to have him to play it with when I pledged. So I had actually pledged and I was like, oh, I'm gonna have to find somebody. And then I saw someone with a name, Josh C in the comments of the Kickstarter. And I was like, oh, I know a guy named Josh and the last name, named C. Uh, so I'll just let a message them be like, Hey man, I haven't talked to you in a long time, but like, is this a game that you, have you, have you seen this? And it was, it was them. And I was like, what are the odds? They live near by me. We got into it. Uh, but then I was like, man, it'd be fun to kind of talk about this and find some other people. And it was first, it was Ash Parker from Gorilla Miniatures games. I can never say thank you enough. He had no right to come on my podcast. We were just like two randos. And he was like, yeah. And because he came on, other people listened. Uh, and then you guys jumped on and, you know, I don't know what you were thinking, but it was great. And I, you know, I even cherished these conversations that we're having now and have had many over the years, uh, but so much fun. And then I guess the third person I'd shout out would just be Duncan Rhodes, who out of the blue, randomly messaged me just to be like, Hey, I listen to your podcast. Like, I think it's great. Uh, and was really kind and said some really positive things. And then I was like, you know, is this the real Duncan Rhodes? And it was just like, oh yeah, there's just like nice people out there supporting other people. Uh, but then those drops of information, the spoilers, the, the kind of the antics, the just having fun with the community, um, that gave a heartbeat to cover and talk about the game. Right. If you just wait for the season update, then you get like, boom, all this information. But then it's like, what do I do now in between? Um, you guys really kept people engaged. So that, that meant a lot, at least that's how it felt on my end. [01:08:48] Michael: So shout out to Duncan Rhodes, by the way, he is actually still maintain communication and still active on things. And he is actually launching his own miniature war game sometime in the future. I think they just started doing some spoilers for it recently, but that should be a lot of fun. Secondly, as well, uh, technically my podcast I started doing, that was exactly created as a means of skirting our, like, we can't officially say anything on channels, but, uh, they basically had no concept of like podcasts or, I mean, I'm sure they knew what they were, but that was just something that was like, oh wait, this is kind of an area that that's not really being looked at or monitored because I guess it's just no one cared. Uh, 2017, right? Yeah, exactly. [01:09:27] Speaker 2: Like everybody and their brother. So that was, that was literally a lot of things because no one [01:09:32] Speaker 1: cared. That was, oh, okay. Well, we cared. So we appreciate it. Well, that's, that's, [01:09:39] Michael: I guess there's technically nothing wrong with anyone saying that, but anyway, uh, uh, yes, there was, so the thing is like our marketing department was like, I feel bad for them through a lot of years because they were, uh, every department Simon was stretched thin all the time because the amount of stuff we were doing every single one of us, like we would love to have dedicated staff to a song of ice and fire. The plan was like, we were trying to hire on staff that were like Fabio. The, the idea was that he was just going to be dedicated song of ice and fire. [01:10:05] Speaker 2: That turned out to be a lie for board games and song of ice and fire, you know? [01:10:10] Michael: Yeah. But, um, marketing, you know, was always like, okay, well, here's the next thing that we have to focus on. So the, I, and then the company has like, here's a perpetual, a line that needs perpetual attention at all times because it is ongoing. It is not just a board game that is fired. And then it's out there, you know, cause you don't really have to keep ongoing marketing for a board game cause they have a lifespan and then, you know, if they're popular, they stay out and you don't need to keep pushing them. But war games need constant attention, like a needy child. And unfortunately, you know, we were always starved for assets in that regard in the company. So, you know, Fabio and myself, we took a lot of it on ourselves too. Okay. We are, we've got to help with the engagement here because if it's not happening from us, then, you know, again, no, no, nothing negative to anyone who was working at the company, but the bandwidth is just not there. So it's either this or it's not [01:11:03] Speaker 1: going to happen. Now that you're both not at CMON, I know you still work in the industry and I'm mindful of that, but, um, you know, one of the challenges is that, uh, in doing that, it generates so much engagement with the community, but it also really makes you as individuals vulnerable to criticism because now there's like a personality. Right. And so it's not just like, like, Oh, the game did this, the game changed this unit. It's like Michael and Fabio did this. Oh, sure. What kind of the strengths and what was the highs and lows of like being out there public facing? Was there some things that you're like, that was really fun. And then you're like, Oh, that was a hard time. So, I mean, so it's a net positive. It's a net positive. That's for sure. [01:11:41] Michael: Yeah. My, my, I don't, I will let Fabio speak more on that because they, they, they genuinely have a huge excitement and love for this and everything. And I'm not saying I don't, but to me, it's just, you know, this is something I enjoy engaging in the community, but you also have to have very thick skin about it because immediately people will have parasocial relationships and just, they can have never met you or actually interacted with you, but everyone's going to have an opinion and you just kind of take that in stride. You get the information out there, you put it out there and then that's it. And that's how I view that. So do I enjoy engaging with people? Yes. Do I acknowledge there's a huge amount of criticism out there? Sure. But it is what it is. You're, you are putting yourself out there. That's going to happen. So you can either just dwell on it and let it destroy you. And the things I've seen to do that to a lot of people, there are some of our internal design and devs that, you know, they, they, they, they took, they took things personally and that's the natural response, but that's also not healthy for them to do. So you, you have to take them out of that role because you know, which is, it's bad for their mental health. You know, Fabio, you know, not to name names, but I'm sure you, you, we have some direct examples you're talking about. Yeah. But like, that's the thing, like comments do affect people. And you know, if you, uh, you know, you, for all the positives that are out there engaging with the internet, I'm sure this might be a shock to some people, but the internet can be kind of a shitty place. So you kind of have to be able to take that, you know, the highs and lows there. That's my thoughts on there anyway. Like I said, [01:13:08] Speaker 2: I, I'd say that I used to enjoy a lot reading comments and most, not, I would say like many people, I don't know if it's most or not. Right. But many people, um, critique the work and I do take that very well. Right. If they say like, oh, um, the, the game design team made, took this decision and I think it's bad because of this reason. Well, okay, that's good. I will take that very positively. And I want to improve not just the game, but myself as a game designer and, [01:13:44] Michael: and I'm open to feedback. Yeah. You have to, you have to take feedback and criticism wherever it is, even if you don't necessarily agree with it, you still have to understand why they're saying this. [01:13:53] Speaker 2: Where is it coming? Where did it come from? They've identified a problem, but I'd say that, um, a lot of people feel entitled. Well, I bought the product. Now, um, I feel entitled that the game designer is my friend and I can speak to him as I speak to, with my friends. I don't know you dude, you know what I mean? And yeah. Um, and I try to be like approachable. And I think most people that meet me in real life feel that I am approachable. I hope so. Um, because that's how I want to be. Right. But at the same time, um, some people forget. And I'd say most of the content creators for A Song of Ice and Fire are relatively small. Right. We do get the nods from the big guys. Sometimes, you know, like, like Duncan Rhodes is kind of like the coolest guy I've ever met in my life. So shout out to him. Buy all this stuff. [01:14:46] Speaker 1: That's a great example of someone who like me, like, I'm so glad they're as nice as they seem. [01:14:53] Speaker ?: Exactly. [01:14:53] Michael: Yeah. It's like, you're sorry. You're suspiciously nice. What's your angle? And then you find out, [01:14:58] Speaker 2: no, that's just them. And it's like, if you want to vote with your wallet, like they say, buy all of Duncan Rhodes' stuff. Like he's not paying me. He's just such a cool guy. And he usually wants to deliver good quality products. But carrying on most community, uh, uh, content creators are very small within the Song of Ice and Fire community. Right. We can name most of them. Right. And, and they know each other and we know them and they know us and we speak. Right. It's, it's, it's a small community. There's like, what, 15,000 players. But once you go to like, the people who talk about the meta and start niching it, right, if that's even a word, then, then it's less people and you get to know the names and faces. And then when, so then when someone on a video calls you a fucking idiot, that's the exact quote, then it's hard. Then I, you do feel like you should take it personally. And then there's a big effort on our end of, well, I won't take this personal. I'm going to try to be the bigger person here and understand that they're just passionate about the project and that they don't understand that words hurt. But if I called that person a fucking idiot, I'm pretty sure there would be a long, long YouTube [01:16:21] Speaker 1: rant. Right. Well, that's the difference, right? We used to think of this as, uh, uh, what's his name? Rory Miller did some self-defense books, but they talk about this thing they call the monkey dance where it's like people get into fights with other people for status and like working in the company, they know you can't really clap back and be like, put people in their place. So it's an easy target to, uh, make comments about or, uh, to ride because there's no repercussion, but it builds up status for other people and being like, oh, and I feel like, you know, now also knowing a little bit on like how long the timelines on some of these work, these things are, they can say like, well, you need to do this. You need to do this. And if you don't do it, they can be mad at you. And if you do do it, they can be like, well, I, maybe that's cause of me when it's like, well, this is like a six month turnaround. Uh, uh, but yeah, I mean, that's a tough thing to navigate. Um, we can't [01:17:12] Michael: all be the, the Wendy's Twitter account and just, you know, snap back at people. I want to make one correction though on you, Chase. You said six months. Uh, we were usually working a year in advance at CMON, uh, on this because of the, the crunch of other projects and everything as well. Yeah. Um, so usually if something was released, it was done at least a year prior. So, you know, uh, the meta might be, and usually was entirely different from when this thing came out versus [01:17:40] Speaker 1: what it was designed around. And so every time when you like, you were like, oh, we messed up, uh, whether it was like the timing of a thing, or sometimes it's like logistics where, you know, now working in the industry, sometimes like things don't get where they need to get, or they get there, you know, faster or slower, or you print a product and then it turns out, you know, that product isn't going to be as evergreen as you think. And it wasn't a great time to do it. [01:18:03] Michael: Uh, I will say that the unfortunateness of that is that yes, that has happened. It has also happened so many times. I can't remember any specific incidents of it happening. [01:18:13] Speaker 1: How about, can I, can I seed something? I remember getting, I bought a lot of foil cards, uh, and it was like, it just felt like unfortunate on the timing. [01:18:21] Michael: I, sorry, Chase. I, I will say this, uh, we will say this and move on from that. We were, it was very surprising to us when we saw those for sale. Okay. And that's what we will say about that. [01:18:38] Speaker 1: Fair enough. Fair enough. Uh, I got it. [01:18:41] Michael: It was very surprising when we saw those for sale, when we know that like, you know, wait a minute, we have an update that's coming out in just a few months. And those things had to have been made. Some things are like about, those are more complex than they seem. [01:18:57] Speaker 2: I guess that you would source me now know this, right? [01:19:00] Michael: Oh yeah. I hate foils. [01:19:02] Speaker 1: Well, the irony is I've got one right here. I've got it. I punched it as a token because eventually I was like, what do I do? I put a little resin top on it and I was like, all right, I can make these into other things. But, uh, you know, it's just, and that's one of the things it's like, maybe people don't realize, I mean, like, is it malice? I think the narrative gets spun so quick. Like, well, they're just trying to get our money. And it's like, you're trying to play an instrument. Well, it's also different departments. [01:19:27] Michael: It's different departments with different objectives trying to do their thing. Sales is trying to make as much money as they possibly can. Design and dev is trying to make the best product we possibly can. Marketing is doing as much marketing on whatever they've got the bandwidth to do. So, and the problem is, and, you know, this is just, again, I don't want to dwell too much on this topic. But, like, even though it is something that we are surprised by, and, of course, as design dev, I know this might be shocking to some people. We are not these overarching gods that get to make every decision based on this product line. And it turns out that we are exceptionally low chain. Yeah. Yes. But the problem is that we also have to directly deal with the fallout of what happens because of that. [01:20:08] Speaker 1: Yes. And you're also the public-facing people for the brand so people can approach you. So, yeah. Anyhow, I guess what I'm saying, I bring it up because I can empathize, and I feel like that must have been hard. [01:20:18] Speaker 2: So, one thing, like, as well, it's not an excuse, but I think it explains a little bit. But everyone that's working in the project, there is no one that's, like, dick dastardly, like, or, like, the evil guy from, like, Captain Planet, you know, like, oh, I'm going to collude the river. You know, there's no one. Everyone in Seamon is actually well-intended as far as I know, right? It's just sometimes you have these different projects that are working isolated from each other, and then people don't communicate, which is normal in any company. And then sometimes you get this, like, sometimes an overlord does put the eye of Sauron or does have a pet project. And once again, with good intentions, right? And that does skew the natural workflow of things. And finally, I think that a really strong point at Seamon, and that does not necessarily happen in other countries, through me talking shop with other game designers and throughout the industry, is that we were never pressured of, like, change this rule for sales reasons, right? And the few times we had this kind of pushback, maybe from, like, a partner or something like that, our own team and our own overlords would say, no, no, no, no. Game design is game design's business, right? Of course, they would say, like, oh, we want neutrals faction. But the two big things that we had come up. We were nerfing a unit. We were never asked, like, buff this underselling unit. That was never asked of us. [01:22:05] Michael: Well, Fabio, actually, to be honest. Oh, here we go. [01:22:08] Speaker 1: Let's get the hot takes out here. You're on your own here. No more time at SEMA. Give us the inside scoop. [01:22:13] Michael: That was actually something that happened numerous times, was we had outside partners that would come and say, like, distributors were not saying, hey, so this unit's not moving. Can you buff it or something? They would, we would get pushed from outside forces trying to say, like, yeah, this is, can you guys do this? Because apparently that, well, I don't know if that's common or not, but whatever, they're trying, again, sales is trying to sell as much as they can. Yep. Luckily, whenever that hit inside internally, that would hit a wall there where, you know, like, as a company, we're like, no, we're not going to do that. Absolutely not. That's, that's a lack of integrity on things there. [01:22:46] Speaker 2: Yeah, that's exactly what I meant. I'm sorry if I... [01:22:48] Michael: Yep. Well, I just wanted to specify that it's not like that didn't get pushed by outside forces. It absolutely did, but we never, yes, exactly. [01:22:58] Speaker 1: You held the door, one might say. And it looks that we're done here, man, that's... What? Was there ever a time of, so one thing that kind of happens is from a sales perspective, you need people to buy a repeat product, right? And if you've got a Stark Sworn Swords, people might buy multiple boxes. That's great for sales. You have a hero boxes. It's a little bit of a different situation. Was there ever any pressure to design units at all for sales? Like you're saying not like buffing and nerfing, but you're like, hey, this would be a great, you know, we're going to launch the army box. And then this thing's going to be the great like sales lead. [01:23:37] Speaker 2: No, this happens in the conception of the product line, right? So we have starter boxes, unit and hero boxes, right? That's when you decide where is the profit margin and everything way back, right? And then you kind of have to stick with your plan unless something's going wrong, then you adapt. But as far as I know, the way the product line was distributed was working, right? There's not too much product bloat. And I think in that sense, it was smooth. But I will tell you, of course, that when Mother of Dragons came out the box, we knew that was going to be a hit. But it's not because, oh, let's plan this master plan to make dragons be a hit. It's like, duh. [01:24:25] Michael: How many years of where are my dragons? This is the most iconic thing in the franchise. And it's a box of three 50 millimeter base dragons for $35 at a time. That's already an insane deal. That's an insane deal. [01:24:37] Speaker 2: I still think it is to this day. [01:24:39] Michael: Yep, still is. But no, we were never dictated like, okay, we have to release this now. I will say that that was kind of a mixture there, because I don't feel anyone in any position that would push that. I knew enough about the line as well to actually say, oh, I have this preference. Because that's the thing, like, you know, and I do this with every single line that I'm engaged with. Even if I'm not a fan of the IP, you know, I become an expert in that IP. Now, A Song of Ice and Fire was an exception, because it turns out like I actually was a big fan of it. But there have been some projects in the past with some IPs that I'm like, I'm kind of lukewarm about. Or, you know, I'm not like the biggest fan of, that doesn't matter. And I feel that's one of the differential things between a professional and a casual designer is that as a professional, you know, casual, you just, you want to work on what you care about. And that's what you, that's what you want to work on. And that's fine. You always want people to care about what they're working on. But as a professional, you don't always get that luxury. Sometimes you do have a, an IP or something that you just need to make work. You still have to treat it with the same level of expertise and respect as anything else. [01:25:46] Speaker 2: So you need to learn to love, right? So if you're pushed an IP that you're not aware of, or even if you originally don't like, you have to figure out someone likes this, right? Why can I try to like have empathy, put myself in their shoes and figure out what the people who love this IP love? And then I think that's what real professionals do. Like that's what Michael said. I endorse his comment a hundred percent. [01:26:14] Michael: Yeah. You know, like for example, Marvel zombies, you know, I was, I'm not a huge comic book fan, at least not Marvel. I'm like, I, I'm not saying I avoided or anything, but you know, I had like the rudimentary knowledge of things. Actually, it's probably more than rudimentary because my, I remember facts and figures. That's what my brain does. Names, faces, people, you know, birthdays, all things like that, whatever. But I can tell you, you know, like, okay, well, this is the specific comic issue from this, even though I don't even care about that line. But point is, is that, you know, I can tell you almost encyclopedic, anything that happened in the Marvel zombies main line, even though it's like, do I really, you know, care too much about it? Not really. It's interesting, but this is not like I'm a super fan or anything, but song of ice and fire. Luckily is one of those IPs, I would say like that. And then like any of the from software stuff, those are probably the most like passionate stuff I got about. Like there are some cool stuff that we, okay, technically, whatever, a song of ice and fire. There were some cool plans that were, of course, had to be linked to book releases that have not happened yet. That were in the pipeline, but they were literally there for probably honestly since COVID because, you know, hey, that the books, the books coming out soon, right? It's coming out soon. You know, because we were dictated by what we could do in the game was by the books because it couldn't be, nothing could be based on the show because that was all HBO rights. [01:27:42] Speaker 1: So can you confirm or deny, don't have to weigh in, but is there information, you know, that is not general public knowledge about a song of ice and fire in that world? [01:27:51] Michael: Tons, tons. [01:27:52] Speaker 1: A lot, a lot. Oh, yeah. [01:27:55] Michael: Which is all subject to change, of course, and actually, and actually did change over the year because we met with George Martin several times over the years. And, yes, there were things that. [01:28:06] Speaker 2: Like, repeat questions have different answers throughout the eight years. Yes. [01:28:10] Michael: Now, that's a topic that I'd want to, we need to verge away from because that one could potentially get, I don't want us to suddenly see, like, Chase just get black bagged on camera. [01:28:22] Speaker 1: Yeah, the faceless man shows up. All right. All right. Message received. [01:28:29] Michael: But I guess I will say in that regard, working with George R. R. Martin and his representatives, they were some of the, and Jim Ludwig as well, that was some of the best IP-related interactions that I have had over my entire, like, career. And that's, you know, I've worked with a lot of IPs. And I will say that that process there was some of the best and most passionate and also easiest going of any of them. [01:28:53] Speaker 2: Yeah. They know their stuff and they care about it, right? So, they won't just approve. They'll meticulously look and give good feedback. Because one thing is just, like, looking meticulously for just IP infringements or something. The other thing is actually looking at the art, reading the texts in a meaningful way and not just finding out words to flag, right? And so, they, we've only had good relationships with them as well. Yeah. [01:29:24] Michael: Yeah, I can't remember. [01:29:25] Speaker 1: Jim Ludwig is super engaged, too. Like, I. Oh, he absolutely cares about. He was so passionate. It's like, that's nice to see. [01:29:31] Michael: Yeah, he is a super good steward for the line and everything. I really can't remember a single major issue that, of any, not even major, any big issue that we had when we were interacting with approvals process or whatnot that came back. Like, yeah, they had their opinions on things, but there was never any time where we actually, like, got into arguments, which I, which we have absolutely happened with several other IP holders where they would make pushes that would either just, well, we won't get into that. There's some, there's, there have been some man. [01:30:02] Speaker 1: Different podcast episodes. [01:30:03] Michael: Yeah, there, there's been some, there's some feedback we've gotten that's, like, very clearly against their own IP that doesn't make any sense, but that never happened with A Song of Ice and Fire. [01:30:13] Speaker 2: Yeah, with multiple license holders, like, I can, I can think of many examples of what Michael is saying. So, it's, it's common ground that it's hard to work with licensing and, and, and other people's IPs. And once again, in A Song of Ice and Fire, like, even George Martin was, like, personally involved in some aspects of the construction of this, which, once again, shows a, a level of, like, zealousness, which is really cool. [01:30:40] Michael: But then, see, going back to, like, circling back to, like, online comments, you had, when we showed up, just cool pictures of him sitting there, like, looking at the miniatures or showing us stuff or, you know, doing, like, some promo stuff for us and everything. You had people that are, like, well, look, he's doing this instead of, you know, writing his books. I'm, like, I'm, I'm sorry to be very blunt about this, but, like, fuck off, man. Like, you know, he could literally not release a single thing and it would be fine because you're, you're not entitled to his time past what he's created. And, you know, that's just an example of, like, you're doing something cool for the community and taking time to do that and people are still going to come out and just do this, just vitriol comments there. It's, like, come on. But you just got to kind of let that stuff go, you know, and that's, that's the nature of being a forward-facing figure of any capacity. Whether it's a creator, marketing person, whatever, you know, you take the good of the bad. And, unfortunately, with the internet, it's usually going to be more bad. [01:31:29] Speaker 1: Well, also, I think you can be in a unique spot as designers where you're that face and you don't get to pull all the levers, right? So, you're going to be taking the feedback on stuff that you have no control over often. [01:31:40] Michael: Again, going more often than not, we are not the ones making, there's so many times, and, Fabio, I can't even think of any specific ones because the amount of times it was where we just kind of, like, Uh-oh, we're going to have to do damage control on that. And it's, like, oh, cool, we found out about this before, you know, when everyone else did. But now we already see down the line of all the ramifications that we're going to have to do to deal with this and or fix it in some capacity. [01:32:05] Speaker 2: 2021 card packs is a good example. Pandemic, honestly, um, fighting to keep the tabletop simulator alive without any cease and desist orders as well. [01:32:20] Speaker 1: And that was a challenge, right? Is that the issue? Because HBO owns the rights to... No, no, no, just avoiding, like, even, like, CMON itself, right? [01:32:27] Speaker 2: Because it's all fan-made. Oh, targeting content creators. And they're putting our cards and our art and our models and turning them into a mesh and putting them into the tabletop simulator. That's, by definition, piracy. But, um, once again, and especially when the pandemic came out, we were, like, please turn a blind eye to the tabletop simulator. For the love of God, don't make a big fuss of this. And that really, really helped keep the game alive during the pandemic. I think the fact that we had a good community-built mod with everything there, and I wouldn't say CMON endorsed, but definitely non-blocked by CMON in any way. I think that helped maintain the game alive to the point where, when I moved to Loot Studios, and before the game found for Malediction was out, I'm like, let's make our own TTS mod. Let's get away for free. Because when you play on TTS, you want to buy the models and you want to play the game. And it proved itself true. And I also think that the fact that the TTS mod existed really helped the problem with the paper shortage, the global paper shortage pandemic, delays in the, like, the canal block, that everything of that together, I don't remember which was which or when. [01:33:54] Michael: That were all directly our faults and only our faults, and only affected us. [01:33:58] Speaker 2: For the 2021 card packs, exactly. Like, that one was one that really sucked, because I would, we would get the grunt of it. Like, everyone would come to us and talk about these things. And I'm like, dude, I cannot make more paper in China. Like, it ran out globally. [01:34:16] Speaker 1: And the worst is it's not one at a time, right? It's, you know, it happens, you kind of address it, and then some random person walks in and is like, hey, where's this thing? And it's like, we just did this. Like, we just talked. [01:34:25] Michael: One thing on this, on a similar topic that I will mention here is one of the recurring things over the years was that we would receive a lot of flack for not acknowledging third-party resources that were designed, developed, or utilized by the community. And, you know, people would maliciously take this as, like, one, we're ignorant of what's going on, which that's almost farcical to say. Or two, that, you know, we maliciously are like, you know, well, yeah, we don't care. We want to keep these guys down. And the truth of the matter of that is that that was literally our means of protecting these resources from non-existence. Because technically, if we, by our, by agreements that were set in place, I can't get into specifics because that's not my thing to say anymore. It wasn't even then. But anything that is not directly released by CMON in some capacity, or sorry, in official capacity, is infringing on rights. Whether it is a song of ice and fire, or very specifically, things that are of the nature owned by HBO, for example. I can say this in probably OK, fine, legalese. If it is not directly related to a tabletop game in a direct manner, such as creating a version that exists online, or using resources from IP-owned products online. Those can technically classify as video games, which is distinctly the rights of HBO. So, for example, if someone were to take the miniature game and convert it into a video game. Well, you've IP infringed for a couple reasons there, but the big one is that's technically you've now made a video game where you don't have the rights to do that. So, everyone involved in that process, technically, by legal law, needs to send you immediately a cease and desist. If you're using assets online, even though, like, as a company, we might not have an issue with it, certain other entities that actually own the rights to having digital assets might have a problem with it. So, all of a sudden, if you acknowledge this, you're acknowledging that this exists, and ergo, it would be your contractual duty to then go kill it. If you don't mention these things, or you pretend they don't exist, or you never, you know, even reference them, then guess what? They get to keep on existing, and no harm, no foul. And if the rare chance someone in one of those positions goes, hey, what is this thing? You can go, oh, what? What are you talking about? Oh, no, we had no... We've never... We have no idea what that is. So, it's probably nothing. You can just disregard it. And then everyone gets to keep co-habilitating. That comes at the cost, though, of people, again, going, well, why aren't you acknowledging this XYZ? Why aren't you officially supporting this? Like, well, because we want it to still be around. Because if we officially acknowledge it, it has to die. In fact, it's our own sense. Yes. But again, these are these things from the back end that people, they don't know. And so, they make assumptions, they act as they're going to, and the result is, you know, okay, you get vitriol from it. [01:37:34] Speaker 1: Yeah. What was, I think, now after, you know, so we talked a little bit about the origins getting started with it. There was a Kickstarter. Fabio came on board. And there's a large swath of period where the game was growing. People were really excited. What was some of the high points for you? Maybe either from a design point or a community point where you're like, man, like, this was pretty cool to see this game be where it's at. [01:37:59] Speaker 2: I have, I think, a couple of high notes for me were, for example, the, honestly, more, it's more internal. It's like my personal growth and achievement. So, Baratheon game design was the first time Michael came to me and said, like, I'm very confident in your abilities. And I want to see what you're going to conjure so you can, like, lead the game design for this faction. And, and I'll just, like, supervise you and, and be, be mindful of any pitfalls you can fall into and, and so on. And so, like, I was able to kind of push my own original ideas with Michael's blessing. [01:38:42] Speaker 1: And how much of that was you? Like, was it always a plan to have it be a dual faction split box or? [01:38:48] Speaker 2: Oh, that was, like, one of the things was, like, are these two different factions? Right. And then I, I don't remember who, these, brainstorming is hard. Yeah, yeah, yeah. How can I remember who called what shot eight years ago or whatever? But in my mind, this is what happened. But take this with a grain of salt. [01:39:08] Speaker 1: Sure. We'll get the, the grandmaster, uh, little thing out. You know, you can tell the story. [01:39:13] Speaker 2: I recommended splitting them that way. And in, mainly based on my knowledge of Infinity the Game. And they're, like, sectorial system where you have this mother faction that branches out. And I remember that Michael finding this interesting and then we resolving how this, how the weeds would be of this, of, like, where are we going to word this? What is the actual rule? And because I started making this, like, convoluted rule. Like, the newer you are, the more you think more rules are better. And the more experience you get, the more you realize the less rules are actually better. So, in my mind, like, yeah, I started making this rule of how to make branching armies and blah, blah, blah. Michael's like, no, no. Let's make this simple one rule in the back of the card. And that, that was beautiful. And so, yeah, I think that's where that came from. In my mind, originally inspired by Infinity's sectorial armies. Because when an idea is good, you adapt it to your system, right? There's no such thing as, like, oh, that's their idea, I'm not going to touch it, right? Creativity is something that's built upon the creativity of others, you know, like the shoulder of giants, yada, yada. [01:40:34] Michael: I always joke that originality died in the 80s, so just do whatever. But, yeah, everything is just innovative of each on things. Like, that's how any industry works. [01:40:48] Speaker 1: And, Michael, are you looking back over this sort of almost, I guess, 10 years, you know, something you're particularly proud of? [01:40:58] Michael: You know, the thing is, for me, is that when I get a lot of enjoyment from the creative process, but once the product is actually done and out there, it kind of is what it is. Because, you know, yeah, you can make a new edition of a game, or in this case, you know, it's an ongoing game, so you've got to monitor that. But I've never been one to, like, kind of cling on to something once it's out there. Like, I love all the projects I've worked on, but once they're done, they're done. And for me, it's more about the process there. Song of Ice and Fire filled a very specific role over the last decade because it was an ongoing one, so that process never ended. So that was always the need. Like, oh, we can keep iterating, we can keep doing these things and everything there. I will honestly say that the thing the proudest I'm about is that the game has lasted a decade off of, effectively, a skeleton crew working on it the entire time. Because I would always say that this is the type of line or product that entire companies are focused around. And for the vast majority of Song of Ice and Fire's life, our design and development team was, like, I would say on average, maybe five people at most. But usually hovering around three to four with then external and internal playtesting. And also, by the way, everyone working simultaneously on other projects. We didn't have the luxury of ever just working on a Song of Ice and Fire or even just two projects. The average for, you know, for our process was we would have three, sorry, two major projects and then a tertiary and then a fourth project that we're kind of like we're partially invested in. That was not including Song at any point. Song never got to take up an actual slot because it was just an ongoing kind of expectation. So, you know, and I will say this, you know, again, I'm no shade to any of our marketing sales guys or anything, but a lot of the major pushes for, okay, this is what we're going to be focusing, you know, our releases on. This is our articles that we're going to be putting. We're done internally by design and dev. Anytime we did a major update, like Visions in the Flames, all those were entirely constructed internally to design and dev. You know, that wasn't a marketing thing. That wasn't, you know, we didn't have writers doing that or anything like for some of the other lines. These were all. [01:43:08] Speaker 2: I remember doing. They're so busy that it's not throwing shade, right? It's unfair to have expectations, high expectations of them in this regard because of how understaffed they were. But most of our marketing staff didn't even know how to play the game, right? And that's. [01:43:26] Speaker 1: And they're also probably marketing other games as well, right? Exactly. A lifestyle game like this is such a big deal. [01:43:32] Michael: They're being pushed to market what is the newest, what's the newest thing we're doing. And the thing is, that's not even like saying shade at CMON. Yeah, yeah. That's how the board game industry works. Yeah, yeah. [01:43:41] Speaker 1: Oh, I know. And I feel like that was, I feel like for, oh, Greyjoys, I think we did like 13 podcast episodes or something. You came on for a series of that. That was, that was wild. But like, that was really cool. And always really appreciative of the, you guys being willing to share and come on and join in the excitement. I think for me, looking back, I can't remember what it was exactly. It was maybe it was one of the updates. And you said I could ask for any one character to be revealed. And I didn't take really enough time to think about it. And yeah, I said Tormund Giantsbane. And you were immediately like, you could have asked about the dragons. I think that still haunts me in the back of my head. I should have stopped the episode and be like, let's restart, go back, whatever, 45 minutes in. I'll ask a different one. [01:44:31] Michael: I'm a big fan of like gin and monkeys pawing and wish mastering things. So, you know, we'll give you exactly what you asked for, but you're going to get exactly what you asked for. [01:44:40] Speaker 1: I feel like I could probably hear some community groans at the time. But yeah, I know, just that being willing to play with the community. That was something I always really appreciated. [01:44:47] Speaker 2: And I think another thing, I'm sorry, Chase, that I'm really proud of and that I think that this episode cannot go finish without me talking about this, is the developer, Felipe Galleno, for Songwas and Fire, where he was originally a playtester. And then we brought him in because of good feedback and because we needed to expand the team where me and Michael were already understaffed. And we needed a dedicated person and that I managed to train him as well from the ground up the same way I was trained. And so there is a method to like the Michael Chennault school of game design. And which is really interesting because now Felipe is a person I admire a lot and I think he's an amazing professional. And once again, it's really interesting how these things carry over and that only a game that lasted more than 10 years can have this like, let's say, call it like three different almost generations of game design and development philosophy and how the game evolves like a living being almost, right? That's something. So I wanted to give a shout out to Felipe because he is also like the heart and soul of A Song of Ice and Fire for like the past four years at least. [01:46:14] Speaker 1: Makes sense. [01:46:15] Michael: For me, it's also just, again, the connections built over the years. Like even looking here, you know, this is, you know, Fabio was a game player in Brazil. The chances of his actually meeting out in the wild are literally infinitesimal. But because this came together and then Chase, you know, I don't want to say it was right place at the right time, but it was like, man, look at this guy who does really good videos and is fairly charismatic and everything. And then, you know, we met at the same time. You mentioned Ash, you know, from Guerrilla Mentors Gaming. That's a, I was like, that's a name I've not heard in many years. And I was like, oh yeah, you know, I just feel, I almost feel bad about that because I'm like, oh yeah, that's right. That is someone that existed there. And, you know, Jim Lugwig, who, you know, I have had, he will also be the one to say that we've had our, you know, our mixed relationship over the years. Nothing bad. It's just that he and I can clash about stuff because we're both very passionate and very opinionated about things. And we both have a tendency to hyper-focus on specific things. Like he, at one point, got really hyper-focused on bow strings on Stark Bowman, even though that's an impossibility. But that was the whole thing. And, you know, at the same time, I push back on other stuff as well. But, you know, it's again, meeting the individuals that are passionate about the community. I remember at Gen Con, I don't remember how many years back it was, Chase, where we had dinner with, like, all of the influencers and people who were there for that tournament and whatnot. And even leading up to, like, last year's Gen Con, when, you know, Fabio was there of malediction and we got to go like, oh, hey, guess what? We're just here as players now, so let's play this game, Fabio. Let's see what you got here. And then, you know, seeing, you know, Chase, all the things you're doing. And also, you know, like the handwritten notes that you had given everyone else there. [01:47:52] Speaker 2: I already have, I bought the frame. I just have to put it on my wall. [01:47:59] Speaker 1: Well, I would say, I guess in the context of that, so we didn't meet in person until last year at Gen Con, which is wild, considering that I may have had conversations or received memes or monkey paws images for you for, you know, almost a decade now. And, yeah, I don't know. I guess what I'm trying to say is, yes, I agree. It's pretty amazing what this game has been able to do in bringing people together. And really excited about what you guys are doing in other places in the industry as well. I guess maybe the crazy thing, it's kind of hard for me to imagine. I guess that's actually why I wanted to have this talk with you is like, I associate you all with so strongly with A Song of Waste and Fire. Fabio, you're killing it over there at Loot Studio with Malediction. And, Michael, I think now as you move on, like just this chance to reflect on like the legacy that you and your team and the people at CMON left with this game. And, you know, who knows what it holds in the future. But, man, you really left a mark. [01:49:08] Michael: Well, you know, like for myself, you know, I've, yes, the time at CMON, I was there for 15 years. And that has, you know, unfortunately, you know, come to an end just less than a month ago. But I will say that, you know, I myself, at least I'm moving on or start that. I will say at least for myself, you know, I've been doing a lot of, you know, consulting and stuff. But I also have some other major projects that are going to be announced very soon. I'm not going to talk about any of them now because that's not the focus of today. But specifically all the relationships I built over those 15 years, you know, I've been speaking to a lot of the artists that worked on the game. A lot of the designers and developers for not just a song of Ice and Fire but other projects as well, bringing them on board with, you know, some new things that I'm doing. So, you know, I'm not saying get the band back together because, frankly, these connections never really went away. But, you know, there's a lot of cool stuff coming out. And I'm trying to, at least in the role that I can, facilitate as many people I've worked with over the years. Because, like, I have respect for every single person that I've worked with in everything that they do. The artists that we've worked with at CMON were all fantastic. Every one of them highly recommended. The designers and devs, same thing. I would vouch for any of them. If I ever felt like someone, at least I speak specifically to internal design and dev. If someone was not meeting the standards that we set for the company, they shouldn't be working for us. And so if they continued working for us and stayed there and everything for any amount of time, then they earned their spot. You know, we didn't want anyone but the best that we could get. There was never anyone that you can't be a slacker. You can't. You know, you need to be trusted to do the absolute best pinnacle work you can and have the capabilities of delivering it. And I will say that was true of every single person we worked with. [01:50:53] Speaker 1: Shout out to Henning Ludvigsen for all his awesome stuff and play mats. [01:50:59] Michael: Every single cool game you've ever played, and I'm just saying in general, he has done the maps for. It is insane if you look at his portfolio. It's every game ever. And Monopoly. He's done like six, seven Monopoly versions, too. Duncan Rhodes also, again, excited for the game that he's coming out. He is a hardcore arachnophobian. I still occasionally send him spider pictures just out of the blue to keep him on his toes. But he is one of those people that's like, man, I wish you weren't as nice a person as you are because you make everyone around you look bad by comparison because of how nice you are. So I wish him nothing but success in his ventures and everything there as well. And Fabio of Malediction, I see the things that they are doing there, and it's super exciting. I actually think they're kind of tapping into what will be one of the main futures of how miniature games will go in the future as 3D printing and the Internet become bigger things. You know, that Internet, I think it's going to stick around. [01:51:58] Speaker 1: I love it. I love it. Yeah. [01:52:01] Speaker 2: I'd say that, like, a takeaway of, like, the future is exactly that. Like, I joined Lute Studios. It's almost two years now that I've been with Malediction. But at the same time, I've been going to a lot of conventions, and you get to see a lot of faces. And it's really cool meeting current and former CMON people, meeting even, like, people that you met along the way digitally, like yourself, right, Chase? And also, like, other people like the Miniac and Duncan Rhodes, and noticing that you're like, wait, actually, I do work in this industry. I'm not just this play tester that got hired anymore. I've got 10 years of just, like, good and positive networking. I know that sounds like so corporate, but it's not the way I mean it, right? It's just you're building friends in this amazing environment where everyone works in the same industry as you do. So now it's much easier to navigate and to kind of, like Michael said, it's hard to, like, oh, let's get the team back together because people have their own interests, motivations, and opportunities. But at the same time, you know that it might be possible one day, and I can see, like, 10 years in the future or something, right, me and Michael sitting down and saying, okay, let's make a miniature war game. And with whatever new technology. [01:53:35] Michael: I so hope that I'm just, like, cyberpunk, like, half cyborg by then. Like, yes, let's make a new war game, and then I can just whirl my mechanical claw. Like, come on. That's the future I want. [01:53:47] Speaker 1: Fair enough. Fair enough. Well, yeah. Well, let's start to wrap things up, then. Thanks so much for coming on to talk. And, yeah, as this sort of this chapter closes, there's more to come from both of you. And hopefully in the future we'll be talking about the things you're doing, and we'll be getting some miniatures. On the table.