Beyond Solitaire Podcast 236: Tilak Vyas on Line by Line

0:22 It's ad break time. I'm proud to announce that the Beyond Solitire podcast is sponsored by Central Michigan University's Center for Learning through Games and Simulations. I'm personally very excited because CLGS has a springtime crowdfunding project on the way. They'll be publishing a revised edition of Jason Morning Stars the Blue Way, which you can hear about in episode 224 of this podcast. But for now, let's get on with the show. Hey gamers, this is Liz Davis from Beyond Solitire. This week at the pod, I have a very special guest. This is TAC BS and he is the designer of Line by Line which is an upcoming game from my sponsor Central Michigan University Center for Learning through Games and Simulations. How you doing Daisy Lock?

0:59 I'm doing great again. Thank you so much for having me. I'm always always excited to talk both games and poetry. So really fun.

1:04 Yeah, I'm super happy to have you on. Okay, so you kind of started the explanation. Line by line is a game and it's also about poetry. So what is it? What are we looking at here?

1:14 Yeah, absolutely. So, Line by Line's a game about writing poetry, and it really is designed to help get people into poetry. So, it's it's supposed to serve as like that introduction. Um, it really comes from this place of wanting to enjoy the the art form and and being someone who really really hated it growing up, especially in elementary school and and high school and always feeling like the way it was taught was super pretentious and the the question that I always got taught when I was in the classroom, was like, why are we learning this and what are we ever going to do with this? Um, so trying to bring that in a way that's like fun, that's exciting, that that leads people to believe in like the the art form that it is, uh, both comes from a love of the space, but also just, you know, games as being a way to teach and and educate and and trying to lead into that a little bit more.

1:55 Nice. So before we talk about the actual game mechanisms, you know, I do feel like poetry is in some ways harder to get people to embrace or try for the first time. So I guess why do you think that is and what are your experiences with that that kind of led to this game's formation? Yeah, and I've actually thought about this a decent chunk and I think that's probably a big reason that this game came to be the way it was. Um, the two like kind of positions I hold are that a poetry tends to be a very solitary art, right? So you've got like visual art which is really really easy to kind of just show off and like work collaboratively with other people in or music for example which almost thrives in like a collaborative space. Um, but poetry is something that you tend to do quietly and it's something that you do yourself and you're reflecting on yourself and and the things you see or the the experiences you've had and that tends to be really hard to get students to sit down and do. So, like when we're trying to teach children how to do this and like develop a passion of the art early on, um, getting them to really buy into that is is kind of tough. Like, hey, we need you to sit quietly and and think about your life is like, oh, well, I would rather play basketball, you know, I'd rather do something else. Um, so I think that's a huge part. Secondly, it's it's one of those art forms that just feels the hardest to correlate directly to like the market in the job market and like what do I do after this? Like where do I take this? Right? It's, you know, if I want to be an animator, then I'd probably be pretty good at visual art.

3:10 If I want to, you know, a musician or a producer or uh something like that, you know, I'd probably get into music. But poetry is one of those forms where like, you know, is being a poet a career? You know, is being a poet something that you take on in your adult life? Um, and so I just think that those lines are a little bit less defined.

3:26 Interesting. So, what made you decide that a game was the way to approach this?

3:33 Yeah, and that's probably a really good question because I think anybody else asking my question, the answer would be that I'm not really sure. But I think for games, it's one of those things where you just want to make something engaging and collaborative. Like that is the the foundation of games. Even competitive games have this element of like we're working together to compete against each other. you know, we're working together to set up the board and the space and and agree to the rules and then we're all going to like, you know, hash it out and see who's the best at villainous, you know. Um, so I think that bringing poetry to a space where it gets to be collaborative, where it gets to be somewhat, um, somewhat together, you're doing it in a group sense, uh, but it's also, you know, more fun, it's more engaging, it's more interesting to kind of break away the the solitary nature of the art and and get people to be involved together.

4:16 Nice. So, um, mechanically, uh, what have you done with line by line to try to achieve all these goals and and bring about that collaboration?

4:27 And that's probably the hardest part, right? It's like, how do you how do you take like an art form like poetry and and make it collaborative? Um, first things first, we threw it into a fantasy setting, right? Where like you're going to be a poet at a coffee shop in like like a a like taverns and is it what's called Legends and Lattes?

4:43 Legends and Lattes. Yeah. Legends and lattes style fantasy world, you know. Um, so kind of lean into that a little bit to make it a little bit more, you know, casual, a little bit more friendly. Um, and then secondly, it's the the game play is really about playing cards to a a table and saying, you know, we're going to build a line of poetry together that is has the devices of a metaphor and a simile. Um, the image that we're going to use is like a crashing wave and the word we're going to incorporate is like worle gig. You have to have the word gig in your line. Um and this really encompasses like the the three major parts of poetry. You know the image, what is the the metaphor or or what is the imagery of your work? Um the device like the various literary devices you can use in your toolbox. And then you know language like poetry is playing with language in a very real way. So what are the words we can use? Um and then players just take a pause for a second and write a line of poetry that aligns with that that kind of dissection of of phrases and and devices. And what they come up with, they then save to the end of the game and then try to create a masterpiece using everybody's lines. So the idea is you have your deck of lines you've written, you pass them to the person next to you, they pick their favorite, they keep passing them around until all of you have like a line of five, which everyone has written one line of your your poem. Um, and you try to create one complete work out of that.

5:55 Uh, so the whole idea being, you know, write a line, but don't feel like you're you're kind of trapped in it. And it's also, you know, if you have someone who's really really, you know, done this for a long time, they don't get to stand out above everyone else because their alliance just kind of get to augment everybody else's work. Um, so trying to get the the pretentiousness and the competition a little bit more out of it.

6:14 Interesting. So, is this game competitive?

6:17 No, not at all. So, the the whole facet of the game is like you're trying to score points based on how many of the elements you use. The more players that use all the elements, the higher your score. And your score is collaborative. So, you're trying to beat the the game, as it were. you're trying to beat the the kind of mark um and save the tavern that you're in or or earn the title of poet laurate for this you know fantasy city that you're in. Um so it's all about trying to get the highest score together.

6:42 Got it. Um so what so you mentioned kind of like you understanding poetry is sort of like the word the image the concept. Um, how did you decide to break down the game to I guess the elements that you picked and like you know when you're picking what words can go in there when you're picking what you know there's only so many simile metaphor type devices. So like what kind of range of poetic devices are in there and how did you choose like what things to focus on to make that game enjoyable and accessible?

7:13 Yeah, and that's probably the crux of like the design problem that this game faces, right? is a you want it to be fun and you want it to, you know, be accessible to everyone. You want everyone to be able to like jump in at the ground level and feel like they're writing poetry. Uh but you also want to teach something. So you can't use the ones that everybody knows because then nobody walks away with anything new. So you kind of have to be a little bit, you know, out on the blue. Um the big answer that I give that's a little bit maybe dry is is just research. you know, it's it's reading a like Mary Kenzy's like poetry handbook and going, "All right, what does she recommend as someone who's who's been doing this work for a long time?" Um, and then just, you know, running it by players to say we had a word, for example, like ziggazy, which was like a word about um the nature of of play. Uh, and we

8:00 Yeah, my pronunciation

8:03 I had a So, I'm actually curious about this because I I think about all the torture I put kids through making them learn about Latin like poetry rhetorical devices.

8:11 Yeah. Yeah. So, we had that one in and I think we ended up removing it because of the problem I'm having now. I can't pronounce it. So, everyone was trying to present their lines and struggling and we were like, "Okay, maybe we we replace this with something else." Um we had some like uh the the amic pentameter was a

8:31 and we were like oh this is going to be super interesting because it's so core to like poetry and not having it and then we realized that like when that's not in play students are really confused as to like what is the alternative right like what is the nonamic pentameter that I now have to use um so there were those types of cards that we ended up removing to let the accessibility be a little bit more present uh and then putting things in that are you know like conceit which is like the extended metaphor everyone thinks analogy is but analogy is is you know completely different idea. Um so things that are either confusing or often uh misconstrued and and letting that be a little bit playful as well.

9:06 How much pre-nowledge do you have to have of those rhetorical devices in order to play? Are there explanations and examples that are built into the game or is it something that a teacher is supposed to teach and then the students play?

9:16 Yeah, so the idea is that ideally you come with nothing and the game has everything you need. So every card is going to have the name of the the device. It's going to have an um the description. So like for example a metaphor is a comparison without the words like assass right and then it's going to have an example and that example is from a real literary work of poetry from like a diverse host of poets that we've got and we've got everyone from like Sir Litical Russell to to Shakespeare to like um sleth you know so like there's a a very wide range of examples that we're drawing from um to give you an idea of like here's how like a very esteemed renowned work of literature is going to use this metaphor uh that just stems from a I think students learn from example like I think that's the easiest way to speech, but B, like being well read is a huge part of being a good poet. So, you know, in influence that a little bit if you can and maybe some students walk out of the game with like a couple of posts they're going to they're going to follow up on or read after.

10:07 Interesting. Uh, so the other thing is if you're scoring based on actually doing all of the things that are given to you as the parameters for your line and everything's given to you, um, how challenging do people find the game versus just engaging and what were you going for with that? Yeah, exactly. And so the the game's challenge, it's it's always supposed to feel like you're winning. Like you're always supposed to feel like you're getting a little bit better. So we never want students to come into the game and get the lowest score threshold. And there is a lowest score threshold which is like beginner poet or something. But like the game is really balanced away from getting students in that realm because the fear for us was we don't want to like turn anybody off from what is already a very distant art form for a lot of students. So the game is balanced to kind of get you towards the middle as much as you can. And the idea that even if one player doesn't add a certain line or word or device, the rest of the team can still score. So no one gets picked on.

10:59 It's like you didn't put it in. What the hell? You know. Um so we we try to make it a little bit more balanced in regards to like challenge. It is just about getting to the higher threshold. Like the higher echelons of play require you to play with the harder cards, the like tier three and four devices which are rather complicated. Um to use them all. Everybody's kind of collaborating and making sure they all get covered in. Uh so it's it's less about the the floor being super high and more about the ceiling being a little bit higher.

11:26 Got it. So basically the game can progress from like okay well I've never done an extended metaphor before to like okay well we are going to put sciss in there and we're going to have people like do it as like a level four thing.

11:38 Yeah. Exactly. It's like you can really trim the the deck out of like the the tough devices and say I really don't know how to use this or you know as a teacher I'm afraid of putting like um Ellisian in in like my my poetry um so I'm going to remove it entirely but I know that my grade 12s are really going to to benefit from having these really niche kind of powerful tools that that kind of define poetry in in literature. So uh it is a chance for students to go I don't know what that one is. I'm going to ignore it to Yeah, I've started to really understand what that one is and I'm going to I'm going to try to plug it in this step. Like give it a shot.

12:13 Nice. So, um, so one of the best things about making a game, I think, is like watching play testers play it and then seeing results.

12:22 So, uh, as somebody who's no doubt watched play testers playing this game, um,

12:27 how what do you see in them as they play? And how did you know that you were starting to get where you wanted to be with your game? Yeah, that's I'll I'll tell you what I saw at first and I'll tell you what I wanted to see and I'll tell you how those two things kind of like got us to where we are now. Um the the first thing we saw was was restraint, right? It was a lot of like this idea that I I don't want to put myself out there in this way, you know? Um and it was seeing a player pick up a a card and like our subject cards that define the whole poem, like what everyone's writing towards. One of them is like rain on graduation. And so you're going to write a poem about it raining on graduation and like how that would make you feel. Um, and we had some pretty good reflection from some of our works about people talking about like disappointment and and the feeling that you're working for something great. Um, and then one of the play testers was writing a piece about how they were actually looking forward to because they didn't want to be on stage like they they didn't want to be on stage and so it raining was actually something they were feeling really great about. Um, and then it came around to hey the the device was going to be a metaphor. So, you have to like write a metaphor or comparison about this this event or this subject. Um, and this student was really really struggling to like not write it down.

13:35 And you can see that they're holding the card kind of towards themselves. They've got it. They just don't want to say it out loud because it is a very like personal thing that they've they've reflected on.

13:43 Yeah. So for us it was like we we love that they're getting to the point of writing but we also don't want it to be so competitive as it was in our earlier drafts that students are feeling they're going to be like subjected to judgment for writing something that is like deeply personal because that is like the heart of the art form, right? The art form only thrives when you're writing about things that are deeply personal. Um so that was the original kind of feeling and that's when we really hit the books again and we said all right a we need to create scenarios that maybe we have some funny ones. we have like good dogs now is one of the subjects um to give people the chance to like kind of ease the the pressure if you need to. Uh and secondly really lean to curiosity. That's what we want to get to, right? Is the feeling of I want to see what that next device card is because I'm really curious about like what the next potential like toolbox I have is what the next image is. Like how am I going to throw a fox into a poem about I don't know clowns. Like how's that going to like come together, you know? Um, so we started with a little bit of restraint from our play testers.

14:40 We're getting closer to curiosity and that's the hope is we we're getting to a point where everyone's really excited about that next card and everyone's really excited to hear what the person next to them is writing.

14:50 Got it. So basically like a lot of the magic of the game comes from I guess trying to have a laugh or just a moment with other people and then also being really curious about what they're doing. And so you want to contribute as like part of that collective experience.

15:02 Exactly. You want to be able to feel like everyone around you is sharing something and they're they're enjoying it. Either it's humorous, either it's it's like sentimental, either it's performative, maybe it's like grandiose and dramatic. Um, but you just kind of want to have that that sense of curiosity of like what is pe what are people writing about like you know rain and foxes and the current image is actually like a stage like how how is this all coming together in that guy's head? Because I am curious. Um but then in the end again you swap lines and you create a line with everybody's independent lines, right? Um so how is this actually going to contribute to my work? What am I going to get end up with as my final piece that is, you know, my line about how I feel really great about this and his line about how he doesn't feel great about this? Like how is this going to feel? Uh and that's kind of the balance we're hoping to trick.

15:48 Yeah. No, it makes sense. Um so how big a group are you envisioning this being played with? I feel like you could absolutely just play this with a couple of friends. It seems like that would be very possible. But uh what's like the upper end of what you can do with this game?

16:01 Yeah. So the game plays from four to six. We say four to six. Originally I had said anything from one to six and then we realized playing with yourself is is not the the in the spirit of the game. So we've kind of toned that down. We tried for two.

16:14 You're hurting me.

16:16 We tried for two and three. We said probably not quite it either. Like four to six really feels the best. Um, we did see some play tests with two players and it does work. It's just the swapping of lines at the end gets a little bit robotic when there's only one person to swap lines with. Uh, because then you know what all the lines are. So, it's it's not really as uh as creative. Um, I mean, you could play it on your own. And hey, I I encourage it, but it's more of a brainstorming tool at that point. But I I suppose it will still help you write something.

16:44 Fair enough. [gasps] Um, so, um, what is your own, I guess, relationship to poetry?

16:53 Yeah. And my, and I, I kind of got to this a little bit at the beginning where like I started learning about it in elementary school and I hated it. I thought it was the worst. Um, because a you have to be reflective and a you have to be it feels like you have to have lived life to some extent to be able to write good poetry. So, I have my friends writing about like, you know, the anchors that hold them back and I'm writing about how like I don't pay my parents rent to stay in their house, you know? It's like it's it's a weird it always felt like I wasn't quite getting the idea of like what I'm supposed to write about. Um, it wasn't until really grade nine and I had an English teacher in grade nine, um, Mr. Steven Murray, who actually is credited on the game as being the first person who helped me like play test and kind of draft a lot of the devices and images, um, who kind of changed the the metaphor for me. And he's like it's not really about like what you experience in your life in a practical sense. It's more about how you feel about the things you're experiencing, right? So it's about like what is that feeling of coming going on a walk to come to school every morning?

17:47 Like how does that feel for you? How does that change when it's an exam day? How does that change when it's your friend's birthday? Um, and those kind of thoughts really helped me realize that, you know, poetry is kind of powerful as a way to reflect on how it is you feel, you know, and how it is you're you're going about what is kind of a strange time in in a person's life to be in high school, you know. Um, which I think gets written to death, but it is true in that way. Uh, so that's really the turning point for me. And then realizing that, you know, getting good at it actually does help you be more well spoken, helps your pros, helps your presentation. Like there's so much value in being able to write and be confident in writing. And I think the era of seeing a bunch of AI writing has just kind of reinforced that for me. Like good writing goes so far. Like so far.

18:31 Um so I I kind of started to fall in love with it in a way. Uh and for the longest time the game was actually titled SAA, which is like to try in French, right? Because I the whole reason for me was being just like give it a shot. Like try it. I promise if you try it and you really really give it to yourself, you'll you'll find love for it. um we had to rename it because there was a visceral reaction to the word essay in our play testers. So we had to we had to tone it out and so now it's line by line which admittedly is a better name and and throws back to some of the inspirations for the game. But it really did come down to just having a really great experience in high school with someone who really really loved the art and understood the art. Um realizing what it could bring me and and the value that it had for me both personally and you know externally and and kind of giving myself the chance to try it. And so that's the spirit of the game is, hey, I I really just want you to give it a shot and like try your best. If you don't love it afterward, hey, that's tool, too. But, you know, you gave it a shot and that's what matters.

19:24 Yeah. That's uh as a former high school teacher, that is very heartening for me to know that like maybe students actually were listening and caring occasionally.

19:33 Yeah. And you know what? Like there there are some classes I walked out of and I'm like, I really do wish I had paid more attention. So, I hope that's that's also brings some comfort.

19:43 Uh, so how did you end up getting this game submitted to CLGS?

19:49 Yeah. And so the the story of this game's development is kind of interesting in that like I studied game design at Wilfford Lauria University um with Dr. Scott Nicholson who's on the the board at the CLGS um and he

19:59 Yes. He's a former guest of this podcast. He's lovely.

20:02 That's amazing. Yeah. Yeah. So he was my my professor for a class I took called independent game design. Um and the idea of the class is you're going to spend the whole course making one board game. and he's going to kind of lead you through like you start with three ideas and you play test them and then you refine down to one and then play test that and then you present it at the end of the class. Um Sea originally now line by line was kind of a submission for that class where I said I want to make a game about writing poetry. I had three submissions. Um one of them was the version we see today with like playing cards and writing lines. One of them was a Tokaido inspired traveling the like the world and picking up various cards and you write at the end sort of experience. Um, and one of them was like a dice game that was terrible. And so I'm glad that one was the first to go, I think. Uh, we eventually settled on the version we have now. And as we got closer to the date of the submission, I was spending a lot of time in Scott's office hours talking about like games and engagement and how do I make this more like, you know, how do I get this more to be more fun? How do I get people to to want to play this, you know, see it on the shelf and actually pick it out and get involved? Um, and it kind of got to a place that we were both happy with.

21:05 like Bullet Scott and I thought, you know, we had to reach something and created something kind of special. Um, so it was upon his suggestion that he said, "Why don't you submit it to this press that I work on? Um, I'll have to recluse myself from the decision-m, but you can at least give it a shot and see what they say. Uh, and if they appreciate it, you know, maybe this is something you can actually like take to publication and kind of follow through on that." Um, and that's kind of how we how we made it happen. So, he he really put the the name on the map for me and I I then, you know, created a submission copy, made a huge series of revisions. um their their first pass was like we really need it to be more like this if we're going to be interested and made those changes and then we kind of ended up coming to an agreement after that. Um so all that to say the program was great, really enjoyed it and then uh got something really really tangible out of it.

21:50 That's really cool. Um so a game design major. So this is awesome. So I'm I'm fascinated by this because um you know I am a game designer and you got there just by I don't know.

22:04 Yeah. Yeah.

22:05 Uh and so like what is it what is it like to study game design? How and how did you decide that was what you wanted to do?

22:11 Yeah. Um let me let me start with how I decided. Um for me it was coming out of high school realizing that I liked art but I didn't like making art. So like I liked talking about art. I liked experiencing art but I'm not an artist. Like I'm not a visual designer. I'm not a a musician to a great extent. Um, so I really love the form. I really wanted to do something in art, but I wanted to like make something tangible without being, you know, tied to to visual art or music or drama or or any of those kind of very niche fields. So, I actually went to the the Ontario University Fair is this big fair they have where all the universities kind of pitch their programs. And I actually bumped into Scott physically with as he was holding a box of of view books and he's like, "While you help me pick these up, we might as well tell you about game design." and I said, "All right, let's do it." Uh, and that's kind of where I heard about the project. Um, I had a passion for games for a very long time.

23:00 My dad, uh, did a contract, he worked at IBM, but he did a contract for Nintendo. Brought home a Wii. Uh, and we used to play every time we would come back from traveling overseas, we'd play Mario Kart, and he would beat me. So, like, no. Which, by the way, like, let your kid win like once in a while, you know what I mean? Like, I don't know why we have to, but yeah, he would always hit me with that blue shaw and it would be over for me. But like I had this love of games as being a a personal like storytelling for me, like being personally invested. And then growing up playing with my friends or growing up playing um Monopoly with my sisters and I knew my eldest sister was cheating every time, but no one could prove it. And then we graduated to Katan and we caught her cheating in that one. So we were vindicated at least. Uh and so games were always on the radar, but I didn't realize that you could do this as a job. Like this is a career. You can make something out of this. Um and that's how we kind of got into games. In regards to studying games, this is really interesting because I think studying games is just studying culture and you you go back all the way to like Ludo Dare, you know, um and the I think it was Huzzinga who wrote his his book about, you know, we are all players.

24:00 Oh, yeah. Homaludins. Yeah.

24:01 Yeah. Homaludins. Um that's the word I was looking for. Uh so you go back to Homaludins and like how people have been playing and and using play as a form of culture and experience and learning for so so long. So studying game design really is studying that is studying how human creation revolves around this this fascination with play and wanting to be playful. Uh and then how can we bring that in ways that are are valued driven and concept driven. So my program was a lot about how can we ensure that we're teaching something? How can we ensure we're exploring something? Um we played like train or buffalo you know two very popular kind of valuedriven experiences. Um, and all of our games were about, you know, making some sort of positive change. Uh, to to study it mechanically, I think, you know, you can do it yourself, but when it comes to really like investigating culture in games, that's where I think the value was for me.

24:50 Interesting. Um, so what is the most interesting or surprising thing you learned about games and culture that kind of is your fun fact? Define that for you. H the most surprising thing I learned I think that a lot of people believe that the the mechanic of your game is like a fund driven mechanism right like you are going to engage the player you're going to addict the player you're going to like grab their attention in some way but the mechanic is so much more powerful than that in that you know such that the medium can be the message the mechanic is the message in video games right the the thing that you do is the purpose of the play and that is where the learning exists so when you create a game Like um the game I'm playing right now is Blueprints. I just finished it. Um I say finished, but I've been told that the credits is not the credits and there's like 70 hours of things you're supposed to do after this. Um but the mechanic of like drafting rooms is the story, right? Like that is the the nature of the experience lies within the the function of play. Um and when we make good value board games, that should be the point. So, I think there's a there's a huge kind of open book of possibility when it comes to game designers really leaning to the idea that their mechanics can have meaningful social socially constructed messaging beyond just the aesthetic layer of the game. So, your game doesn't have to take place in like an authoritarian state um for the game to be critical of, you know, power structure. Uh as long as that mechanic is is leaning in that direction.

26:17 Interesting. Uh, and then I guess did the I like did the favorite games that you consider or games that you considered your favorite change as you studied games?

26:28 Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. I think you you start by enjoying the games you enjoy. And I'm again like I I do think games enjoy what you enjoy. Like if you like, you know, I was a huge Dota 2 fan before university. If that's the game you enjoy, like hey, that's so much like you know, find passion in your your hobbies, right? Um, but the games that I enjoy now have started to lean more towards those like single player storydriven experiences much more than like the multiplayer stuff. Um, I promise I still have friends, but the issue is uh, you know, wanting something more for my games as like commentary or or purpose or message or meaning and finding that more in in different titles. I do have to turn it off every once in a while. Sometimes you just got to turn it off and enjoy the game, you know, um, in a way that I think well published authors probably have to turn off their side of their brain that's critical of the book or, you know, food reviewers have to be able to just enjoy, you know, macaroni and cheese every once in a while because it's it's what's available at home. Um, I think sometimes you got to turn it off and just enjoy the game. But when I'm when that part of my mind is on and I'm being critical, it's it's the games that are a little bit more socially driven that are are more interesting.

27:37 Interesting. So, what kinds of games have you played in the past, I don't know, year or so that uh really surprised or impressed you as somebody who studied the craft like with what they were doing?

27:47 So, I and I'm late to the party. I played Return of the Ordin recently. Um, and I thought that game was fantastic. I thought like just like really really peel back every layer, focus on the one thing you're going to do, which is this like investigative find 60 people on this ship um experience. And the puzzles are so rich that it is possible to do it like within the one bit, you know, grainy dither art style. You can solve these puzzles, right? Um, so I found so much value in just a game that had like a really, really, really tight mechanic, really knew that it was good at what it was going to do, and then stripped back everything else and said, "This is the one experience. The only experience you're going to get out of this is this puzzle." Um, had a lot of fun with that one. Uh, I'm looking at my my shelf of board games over there to see if there's anything that like really really caught my eye recently. The one I played that I had a lot of fun with was Wingspan. Um, finally got around to picking it up and thought it was like really creative, but I love birds. So, I think the aesthetic layer drew me in in a way that I didn't expect. Um, and then back to like the video game front, the one game that I've been, you know, singing to the high moons uh very recently as like the game that I really thought was fun um in that kind of reflective sort of way was this game called like Eyes Wide Shut I think.

28:59 uh which is the game that every time you blinked in real life, the the time in the game would progress, but that's the only time the game's like time skip would happen.

29:08 So,

29:09 you've got this like very linear like kind of movie you're watching and every time you blink your eyes, it skips forward like a year or like a couple months or a couple of days. Um, and it's just about a family who's like losing a loved one to like a sickness. Uh, and just watching that like rapidly spiral out as you go closer and closer. So, that was a really really special I think experience. Oh, that's really fascinating. So, I've noticed that. So, it it seems that when I ask for examples, you primarily talk about video games, which is fine. We are omnigrs here. Uh, but um what do you are video games when initially drew you? And like what's the kind of video game board game ratio you're at right now?

29:48 My issue with board games is finding people to play them with. So, this is going to be the I think the the least special take of all time. Um, no. I I would love to have more board games on my roster every day. Um, but you know, you come home from a work day and you're like, I guess I'll relax. I'll I'll spin the TV up a little bit. Um, that just ends up being the the easiest thing to grab. When I'm with my friends, though, and we're, you know, hanging out at the cottage or like we've got a weekend free, that's when we break out the big games. I have a Gloom Haven campaign that's been going on for like a year now and I'm I'm very confident we'll finish it. Um, I'm not sure if my players are as confident they're going to finish it, but we're committed to getting to the end. I think the ratio for me right now is just like maybe I play like 75% more video games than I do board games just based on like the availability of the play, you know?

30:33 Yeah. Although, I have this amazing secret for you and it's called solo board gaming.

30:38 Well, I would love to hear some recommendations on like what a good solo solo play spread looks like.

30:44 Oh, we can we can talk about that after the show. This this podcast is called Beyond Solitire for a reason. That's what I make. But

30:51 I'm excited.

30:52 Um uh but um no, that's super interesting. Okay, back to poetry. I've just been kind of thinking about this. You mentioned that you kind of included examples from a wide variety of poets. Um when we're talking about trying to look for diversity of of poets from whom to draw examples,

31:10 uh how did you do that? especially in a world where I don't know. I just kind of feel like people think of like poets as something that's like a bunch of old white guys that you read in your English class.

31:19 Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's it's such a good question and I love that you asked it because I was terrible at it. So like um when I did my first submission of line by line, one of the big revisions they asked for is like, "Hey, you got to diversify these examples. Like this is not great." Um, and it was that problem of like you you open the the the textbook and you go like I would love to see, you know, I would love to get these examples in. I'm going to open my my poetry handbook. I'm going to look up some examples on like poetry.com and and find some examples and they're always going to be, you know, the old fogy white dude. Um, and that's going to be the only kind of recognized examples, especially in education. So really what I ended up having to do was a break out and actually hit the stores and like find poetry compilations and books and and written work um from authors that are a little bit more diverse. But secondly it was like lubing in people who had more experience in the space than I did. So you know talking to to Mr. Murray and asking him about you know you've been teaching this for a very long time who have you taught in the classroom that kind of breaks the mold.

32:18 Um and him having some really really great examples. Uh, and that's honestly the best advice that I would have is like find people to share poetry with because people who with different experiences are going to find different work. Um, and that is the best way to diversify the roster. Uh, the textbooks will will tend to lean in one direction. That's the sin I committed was was relying on those. It was when I when I started talking to people who love the the craft that you start to really find the people who who define it in a very different way.

32:46 Interesting. So, um, you know, it sounds like you were kind of learning more about poetry as you were developing the game, which is cool. So, who did you discover that really like surprised or amazed you?

33:00 That's a it's actually the the namesake of the the game is is Line by Line. And this is a reference to Anne Lamont's Bird by Bird, which is like this work of poetry and writing. It's a it's a book of advice on writing and and poetry. That was the book that I discovered while doing this research that wasn't a poetry handbook. It wasn't a book about, you know, it wasn't a poetry textbook in any way or a compilation. It was just a book about writing. And I said, you know, let me give this one a shot. Um, and that's the book that I kind of fell in love with the most that became like the primary driving inspiration for both continuing and kind of chugging along through all the the revisions and changes and process and work. Um, but also just like falling in love with the form kind of all over again in a way that made it worthwhile to to learn more and and become better as a poet myself. uh such that again like my the title of the game is now somewhat of a reference to to the title. Um so that was the one that surprised me the most was was picking up a book that had nothing to do with poetry and was about writing in life and finding some value in it uh for both the project and and the form itself.

33:59 Interesting. So you mentioned um working on your own poetry. How do you view poetry versus game design as like ways of expressing yourself?

34:09 I I think they're strangely similar. I think they're almost identical in like in like a very strange way. Um because it is all about in poetry, it's all about finding the right word. So you you drop like a line. Um you'll write maybe three lines across, you know, your 15minute writing blitz you're going to do, right? Um you're going to put it down, you're going to come back to it the next day and realize that you pick like seven words you hate because it just sounds wrong in your head. So you're going to rewrite it again. Um, and you're maybe going to rewrite it again after that and maybe another time after that until finally it's like you went down from 17 words to four and you're happy with these four words and that is going to be your opening line. I think game designs are almost game design is almost entirely the same function. It is I know what the the image is. I know what the aesthetic is. I know what the the style or setting of my game is. So, I'm going to design this character or this mechanic or this combat ability or this combo that this game is going to involve. Um, and then I'm going to look at it the next day and go, "Oh my god, this is way too complicated. this is like my players are never going to understand that you're supposed to play cards in this order to achieve this, you know, this rating. So, I'm going to cut back like seven of them. And then you go, well, I realize now that my players are going to be able to break this system. This card and this card pairs with every other card in the game. The game's broken. I'm going to need to play makes this a little bit more robust. So, you're going to add cards. So, it's this process of just knowing what the the setting is, knowing what the goal is, and it's just the process of getting there through trial and error, writing it down, testing it, reading it, reading it to other people.

35:34 Um, them coming back and saying, "It's terrible. You write it again." Uh, until you finally get something that kind of feels good for both you and your audience. Um, and it's it's that, you know, iterative circle that I think most arts will feel, but like game design, I feel the most and poetry is almost entirely built. Nice. Uh, are you also working on designing video games or do you see yourself as primarily a board game designer?

36:00 I I don't think I've spent too much time in video game design. I think like board game design is a thing that I fell in love with. I play, which is odd because I play a lot of video games and I design board games. I just think they're so much more like straightforward. It's like writing music for piano, you know? You can see all the keys and it's like that's what makes board games so much fun is you can see all the like you know what all the elements are. You can see them happening on the board. you know, nothing is surprising you. Um, and I think that's what makes game design. It's like game design in just purest sense almost. Uh, so I I do enjoy that a lot more than I do with games. I think with game video game design, especially during my major, um, like the engine and the physics and then the asset and then you have to have a soundtrack that you can't just use Spotify be like, "Hey, play this playlist. I promise it'll be good when you play my video game." Um, it kind of it kind of gets away from game design into like, you know, multimedia product. Um whereas games in a board game sense are very very very tight uh in a way that like you really get to to embrace the game design part.

36:57 Nice. So uh what other board game projects are you working on right now uh other than line by line?

37:04 Well, I think line by line is a full-time job, let me tell you. No, I would I would love to have and like there's always an idea on the back burner, right? Like we had some ideas about a game that um was like more Shakespearean in nature. So it was about like play and plays uh and was about like gathering stories and writing a play and then they were like supposed like we were trying to get to like a Shakespearean outcome where um it's about teaching the the the strength of pros and the strength of you know um that kind of world building. Uh kind of struggling to get there but you know maybe one day after line by line's in a good spot we'll come back to that idea. Um, we also had this game I made in my undergrad that I really liked. And it's a friend of mine made called Desert Wastes, which is about like wasteful consumerism and like uh throwaway culture. Um, where you play like one of four traveling caravans trying to get to the big city and uh how much you lose on the ways like both impacts the journey the next time you go back, but also how much you're actually throwing out every time. Um, so that was a game we kind of threw around and maybe again we'll pick it up when uh when we get through this project, but you know, all I'll steam ahead on this one for now. [snorts]

38:16 Nice. Um, so possibly since question, but I got to ask. I'm just curious. So like um so I've never made a practical career choice in my entire life. Like I went to college and studied Latin. Uh so this is not a judgment. It's actually just a curiosity. So like it's very hard to get a job in the board industry. Yeah. What does career training or career prep look like in the context of a game design program where people may or may not end up as full-time game designers afterwards?

38:46 Yeah, absolutely. The the beauty of my program is that it was going it was very game focused. It's it's a game design and development program of course. However, they were intelligent enough to recognize that like the field is incredibly niche and especially nowadays in incredibly incredibly competitive. So the the process of building skill sets that are transferable outside of the space both in development because we we learned engine development. So if you want to go into computer science and and develop alter alternative apps or or you know programs that are outside of games that's an option. Um we learned enough art to be able to kind of do that sort of work if you wanted to step out of games and do art for you know movie or film or animation or whatever it may be. Um and for me like I my my focus through my degree was in production. Um, so in learning how to manage teams and manage projects and then that's kind of become my day job now is even though I don't work in games, I spend my time doing production or or project management. Um, and so kind of taking that outside of the space. So when it comes to like career trajectories in games, I think you've got exactly the right frame of mind, right? That it's really really hard to guarantee anything in the way that uh education might have been able to a couple years ago. And I think that's kind of broad across every non-speist field like that isn't medication or law or something like that, right? Um, but taking the time to learn skill sets that are valuable to like a digital landscape, be it in production or art or sound or development, and then finding space outside. And then I think a lot of my cohort that year who aren't in games have intentions to return to the field at some point, but you know, build a portfolio and come back. Um, which I

40:18 think that last sentence is the true answer to your question is the best advice I would give is like build portfolio, right? Like find a way to make projects and and ship projects. But um even if you can't as part of like the whatever your your circumstances maybe there's always options outside of games that are are similar in the workspace that you do or the work that you get to do. So um just kind of one more question then for people who are thinking about going into game design what do like you've mentioned part of it right which is make a portfolio and come back but for people who are I guess thinking about pursuing artistic career in general um and nervous about it or not sure what to do like what are I guess some words of encouragement that you would offer because it seems to me like you're doing very very well uh with your choices so far. Yeah, I think that like you can try your best to to plan your entire life around like the the most practical choice, right? Like you can say like the most practical choice uh is to, you know, study biology and then become a doctor and then you you're kind of stable for the rest of your life, right? And you make a good salary and life's good in that way. Um but the most fulfillment you'll ever get out of, you know, the life that you get to leave is like getting to do the things you do every day. Um and actually enjoying them. So for me it was, hey, I could go into engineering if I wanted out of high school, but I know I'm gonna hate myself every day. Like, I'm gonna hate this work. I'm gonna hate the people because I hate the work. And

41:33 yeah,

41:34 am I gonna have stability? Sure. But like, is this really worth pursuing to such an extent that I'm willing to throw away what is the majority of my time every single day doing something I'm never going to never going to enjoy. Um, and so my word of encouragement is like I think the most valuable thing you can have in a job is the the ability to go to it every day without feeling terrible, right? and the ability to go to an MGA and look forward to the work. Um, and you can only get that if you're if you're pursuing something that you're actually going to, you know, be passionate about and, you know, enjoy contributing to, which, you know, is not super practical advice when it comes around to, you know, the the feedback I got when people would tell me that in high school is like, "Yeah, but like I got bills to pay. You know, I've got rent to make." Um, and I hear you. And so sometimes, you know, you got to make the choice that makes the most sense for like the position you're in. I always say if you have the opportunity and you have the the position and the the resources to do so, you know, chase the dream at least enough to know that you've satisfied that that itch inside you and you're comfortable knowing that the choices you'll make from here on out will allow you to benefit from that.

42:34 Excellent. Well, I hope you keep chasing and that we hear from you some more in the future. Uh so for now, however, you get a couple softy questions. So the first one is okay, so we talked a bit about games that you've enjoyed recently. Um, but if you're going to recommend a book of poetry to somebody who has not read one, what uh what would you push first?

42:54 Oh man, this is so this is this is a cheat question because like Bird by Bird is not a book about poetry, but it is a book about writing and life. Uh, and it is the book I've recommended. So, so maybe I'll start there. Um, that being said, Margaret Atwood is my my favorite poet, and that's a because I'm Canadian. She's a bit of a Canadian icon. So, like you kind of have to respect Margaret Atwood. uh here at home. Um but her works have always been super super powerful for me. So like Paper Boats for example um is probably the one that I recommend the most, but it's a it's a collection of just her work.

43:25 Nice. Yeah, I like Margaret Wood a lot. Um I always So for all my graduating students, I'd slip in a copy of Kavafi's Ithaca.

43:34 It's a great poem about how to I don't know enjoy your life to the max, which I think is what everyone should be doing. Uh which is exactly why I'm really glad to be game design majors. So

43:44 yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Enjoy your life to the max. Exactly.

43:47 Um and then if you want to be found online, people track your work. Uh where's the best place to do that?

43:54 Yeah. Um honestly, right now I'm living kind of under the grid. But that being said, uh I think like following along with line by line, you you'll you'll be able to follow it at the the the website of the the press um the CMIC and that's the best place to kind of follow along with the project and like how the project is doing and and where we are in the stage of the project. Um, I think that's the best way to kind of support me and my work is is through is through the line by line and kind of the work we're doing over there. Uh, and otherwise, you know, kind of stay in stay in private myself.

44:25 Fair enough. Well, everyone, I can be found anywhere beyond solitire because I'm chronically online, which isn't helping.

44:30 I mean, that helps, you know, when you've got a you've got a social podcast, right?

44:35 But, uh, Tlock, thank you so much for your time. I've really really enjoyed getting to chat with you. I'm super excited for your game and all the games to come.

44:41 Thank you so so much. And again, like you know, it's always a blast to talk a little bit about games, careers, poetry, you know, the whole nine yards. Um, so thank you so much for having me and giving me a chance to yap about it. All right, if you're out there, please like, subscribe, comment, ask questions, and most of all, happy gaming.