Beyond Solitaire Podcast 182: Daniel Newman and Marceline Leiman on the Indie Games Night Market

0:23 it's ad break time I'm proud to announce that Beyond soliter podcast is sponsored by Central Michigan University Center for Learning through games and simulations on February 4th they will be launching Greg luring Albright's keep the faith on backer kit it's a light RPG about the evolution of a new religion and I wrote the curriculum guide for it so you already know I think it's great so keep an eye out for it uh I will also mention that if you want to support this podcast please visit patreon.com beond soliter and help me keep the lights on but for now let's get on with the show hey Gamers this is Liz Davis from beond soliter and tonight on the podcast I have two very special guests I have returning guest Marceline game designer extraordinaire and I've also got indie game designer and publisher Daniel Newman and we're going to talk about indie games so uh for people who have not heard from y'all before Marcy you want to introduce yourself sure so I am a freelance game designer um most people would know me from my solo designs on both uh Northstar games oceans as well as Underdog games uh trekking the world second edition as well as trekking the the world trekking the national parks um uh but yeah I have a bunch of more stuff in the pipeline and most recently uh I got my game high tide signed that was at the indie game night market fantastic and Daniel yeah so I have been um a game designer about 10 years now I've had some stuff published with larger Publishers like uh Dead Man's

1:53 cabal um and Mory from allplay um the last few years have been focusing more on uh my my company new Mill Industries which I've done been doing mostly trick ticking games um from Japan and some from the US uh and been pumping out like 12 to 14 games a year at this point um and uh then most recently started uh this Indie Games Night Market thing uh at Pax unplugged this last November yeah so why don't we start talking about that so where did the Indie Games Night Market come from what I do know is that it packs you it was a smash success people were lining up hours in advance I'm pretty sure every sold out it was great where did it start and were you expecting it to do as amazingly as it did so it really started um from my experience going to the Tokyo game Market in Japan uh the last couple years which is uh it's almost it almost feels more like a flea market than like a big convention like that we're used to like the tables are much smaller there's just a ton of people selling their stuff stuff it's usually just like the designer of the game that's that they're selling and they're just selling there they're stand there selling it um and it's a lot of stuff you'll never see again they'll they make it probably just for that show and then once they sell out their 100 or 200 copies they printed like that's it um and realizing we didn't really have anything like that in the US like the design scene is very much focused on pitching to Publishers

3:25 and you spend a lot of time trying to get a publisher to decide to make your game for you and then you wait for it to be made and then you hope you see it in stores and you hope you get your royalty checks and it's it's a very different feeling than like the vibe at uh game Market in Tokyo um so I thought it'd be cool and like i' talked to some other friends um that have also gone to to game Market or into the the Japanese games um and they' been talking about wanting to try to start something in the US to kind of emulate that or get something going um so this was my effort to kind of bring that that Vibe and that uh that approach to game design and and game publishing and stuff to the US uh kind of For the First Time amazing and then how did you decide how to get the word out and who to invite like did you invite particular people or did you put on an all call and how was like the response you got in proportion to the invites you put out and Mar maybe you can come in and talk about how you got on this after so I I didn't I thought about kind of handpicking people for the first one um just from like folks that I've been talking to but that didn't feel 100% like the way I wanted to go about it um so I just kind of leaned on my social media presence and my mailing list for my publishing company which has about 1,400 people at this point and I've been on Twitter when I was on Twitter it was like up to I know 6,000 followers or something so I felt like I had a bit of a foothold at least for people who had

4:56 been paying attention to what I've been doing in the space um which again like has been mostly trick taking recently so I just kind of put out like a call on social media and had people retweet it send a thing out to my mailing list and just was hoping that we would get responses back I really had no idea how much we'd get um we were limited by the venue um uh partnering with pxs unplug was great because they handle a lot of logistic stuff um but we were limited to 20 vendors um I wound up getting 26 applications and then had to kind of filter out what I thought would be the best kind of group of of um of games to have available uh and Marcy Marceline was uh one of those Chosen and she can talk about uh her end of that experience yeah so yeah Daniel put out like a forum where we just kind of like put basically pitched our games in a really like low effort low stakes way we weren't required to really even have like a cell sheet or anything nothing like super super crazy it was mostly just a formal way for Daniel to like look through all the pitches as fast as possible and make determinations um because I I believe at this stage it's just you running it right yeah yeah it's still it's still really just me I had a couple other people I was I was talking to kind of Consulting with me like that I would bounce ideas off of about how things should be run um but yeah right now it's still kind of just me doing it um and I did I do want to say that um the application forms I stripped off people's names because I didn't want to

6:27 be influenced by folks I knew because I knew that a lot of my friends were going to be applying because they were the ones who were going to know about it but I wanted to make sure that I was fair to other folks who might have come across it um anyway back to right but from my perspective it was like super exciting I also had heard of uh Tokyo game Market although I've never been there um I have over the years ordered a number of games either through friends or just through these various websites that I discover on the uh on the internet you know uh mostly the surrounding the Portland game Collective Discord um server um where it seems like a lot of the information that seems to have proliferated over the years mostly comes from that space um as well as like the spaces that have bled out through there um and so I've had a lot of uh great opportunities to uh play some really interesting really rare games and there was something about the Rarity of the games that like specifically uh like tickled me a little bit knowing that like this could be a game I never have the opportunity to play here in America this could be a game that is really great could be my favorite game um and so the spirit of like just knowing that these were small Indie runs um really like uh got a foothold in like a lot of people here in America a lot of excitement and I've also separate from Daniel also believe that something like that could totally exist here and uh we both live in

7:57 Brooklyn and it feels like this space is so big for like Zen and Indie publication why can't it be true for games too um and so when I it came to me pitching to Daniel with the game I wanted to make the initial game is not the game that I wound up with actually um that happened with a few people actually yeah what they wind up coming to the show with wasn't what they had originally said yeah so I pitched Daniel completely different game and he was and he accepted that one uh the game I pitched him was um more of like a trick taking game because I I knew that me pitching to Daniel his specific Niche is more like card gam tricking game so my initial Instinct was to pitch him that um and it did get through you know his personal filter and I was accepted um but I later on felt like especially after seeing um Manny dominguez's uh Pez games so when he came out with the Pez games I very short and he and I are very close we have like a our personal like DM group chat of a few designers of us uh from more of like the button shy world but um Manny and I uh were set to make a trick-taking game together that was like the game that I was pitching and he said that he wanted to work on these Pez games uh which so he would basically apply separately from me but still like collaborate with me um after seeing like how much interest people were having in the weird idea he had

9:29 around these Pez games it influenced me to want to go weirder too and so I decided I'm going to not work on this thing um both Manny and I at the stage that we were developing it uh our trick-taking game uh we I think neither of us really felt like the spark was like holding us through the development phase and so uh it kind of gave me an opportunity to focus on something else gave Manny an opportunity to double down on the Pez games uh he actually ended up bringing like six different Pez games including one of my own um and so what I ended up making was uh an abstract game because something that I noticed in a lot of like Tokyo game Market releases was there was card games and there's also like these really weird o otherwise uh unmarketable you know abstract games um and these are two genres of games that like don't generally get signed here in the US until more recently with trick t games so um I felt like this was a perfect opportunity to put out an abstract game where I know at least I thought I knew it would never had the opportunity to get signed um obviously more recently that has changed um and it has been signed but I think that's mostly to do with the hype that came up around the game Market all right so speaking of the hype before we get into more General indie game topics which is where I'd like to go tell me about the actual the market

11:00 so uh Marceline you were supposed to hang out with me after this night market and it didn't happen yeah we were supposed to play Obsession I will not be resentful because it sounds like this is a smash success and it was exactly where you should have been that night um so uh from each of y'all's perspectives talk about it um I will say like Obsession was a game I really wanted to play with you but I just couldn't say no to hanging out and all the energy that was coming from everyone that night Daniel you take it away yeah no it was nuts like because it was the first time we were doing it I had no idea what to expect or who was going to show up like it could have been 20 people right um and it wound up being close to 500 um they actually stopped counting at around 420 or 430 because the guy from Pax who was in charge of the line was like I need to get food so I'm just gonna let people in at this point as after like an hour and a half I think um people started lining up we were opening at 7 and people had started linting up before six o'clock it was like a quarter to six and people were already in line it was like 15 people in line um wild like had no expectations that it was gonna it's going to be like that we have like foot like Drone footage somebody had a really long uh poll that they had their phone on they were taking like basically Drone footage um and just like the snaking line that was just going for days um wild almost everybody sold out of what they brought there were a couple exceptions um but yeah no it was it was

12:34 bananas and I was busy the entire time uh in fact I had a friend stopped by about halfway through and asked me if I needed anything and I realized my water bottle had run out and like my throat was getting really sore and so she ran and like refilled my water bottle for me which was life saving um but yeah it was it was wild I had people were who were like effectively like ravaging my booth they were like I wanted I was anticipating maybe more like what Daniel was anticipating which was like more of like an orderly fashion not like because this is going to be a small event it's our first time doing it but it was crazy um within the first few minutes uh people were coming up to me um you know and I like I kind of organized them into like an order and one of them uh one of the people in line like five people behind the front scanned my venmo code on my board paid me and then showed me that they paid me so that they can definitely get a copy even though they were already yeah he jumped the line um and I was like I should make an example of you yeah I was I should make an example of you but you already did pay me so I guess there's nothing I can do thank you for the tip yeah I should have most people were pretty chill but there were a couple that were very intense yeah I would say most people were extremely kind um either to tell me like your game looks beautiful or I've been following your game on social media um or even just like if they

14:05 hadn't heard of it before they are like just stopping and asking if they can demo the game I've had I had like a separate station for people to just play the game at the table and a lot of people were interested in that um I had 20 copies of the game available at the uh event and like at a very last minute I ended up producing 30 additional bring your own pieces versions which is just like normally the game comes with like this sack of pieces uh and a box everything you would need um and then I charged like separately for this like cloth board that I had produced from uh these great also like Indie folks called inkling highly recommend them um they do cloth boards but mostly mostly like uh role playing stuff but I uh heard about their patreon on so I was like oh this these are like great people to work with I want to like they're like the same level of like people that I want to you know also support so uh I hooked up with them and they produced uh 50 of these so I was able to pair up 20 you know with the copies I had plus an additional 30 that I can sell just as the cloth board so people who couldn't you know get the pieces that I made could use like Checkers at home or something and I feel like for what I was able to produce um within the time I had um I feel like this was the best option for me um like

15:36 for me uh each of these pieces is like painted and stamped by hand like I spray painted them and then I stamped them and then I I lacquered them too on both sides to make sure that the stamp actually like set in there um so it's like a lot of Labor to to produce this game by hand um and I wanted to be able to prove that I've made this game by hand by like you know um posting a lot on social media showing my process and I feel like people really appreciate that kind of thing people don't really think of making a game as like physical creation of the game usually that's like reserved for people who like design the games and they make prototypes of the games um but so much of game design is also craft right um the more Tools in your tool belt for what you know how to build you actually can make more interesting games like um I think Daniel um was it you that was messing around with 3D printing with one of your games oh for sure yeah I I had built I had 3D like modeled and printed like a little marble dispenser where like if you depending on how you drop it it would funnel the marbles into like four different directions I really I started playing around with all that stuff right before I quit designing Euros because I was getting too obsessed with like these mechanisms and not developing interesting games around them um but you can definitely go off in that direction there's like all sorts of possibilities but the main thing is like you taught yourself you know some form

17:08 of like all these forms of craft and that allowed you to make a game or at least play in a space that you otherwise couldn't right I mean I also have a background in like in photography and architecture um so like I I love making things and like sometimes I need I just like need to make I worked as an architectural model maker for a while so like building is often a part of my creative expression and that was definitely true in game design um now it's mostly just card gam so I get less of that but I still even if I'm doing most of my prototyping and testing online I still always print out and cut and sleeve cards so I always have an up-to-date version of it in case I can test in person and that is a big part of the process for me every time I do a new iteration I have to update my prototype like I still do it even if I'm doing all my testing online which is kind of funny I I do think that like that it's very like reflective of the end product when we you know make sure to make things in real life you know whether you're like you're making cards but you're testing digitally a lot I'm like you you working with like physical pieces and playing on like TTS is like one way of doing it but it doesn't quite give you the sense of like presence right that like actual games on a played on a table with other people um give you so entire conversation is going in fasinating directions but I want to pull it back to you so both of you make I guess what we would label as indie games you've both published with larger

18:39 Publishers or are working in your case Marceline for a larger publisher Dan you got your own company so you're publishing your own and other people's games correct y so I feel like for people who are listening and just get games that look cool and don't necessarily think about the positioning of those games in the industry what makes a game Indie versus not and then within your own work when do you feel like you're doing Indie work versus when you feel like you're doing like I guess established publisher work I don't what is even the word for that um so with my company specifically it's almost all direct sales um I work there's like four or five retailers uh most a couple in the US but the other ones like in different parts of the world that will order my games and sell them but they specialize in kind of imports and weird stuff like that so if you want a new Mill Industries game most of the time you have to order it directly from me u i don't put any sales info on the back of the game like I don't have ad copy on the back like there's usually nothing on the back of my games because they're not in stores so I don't need that on them um so I'm not I'm never gonna be selling at I'm not gonna get a booth at Gen Con right like I'm printing three to 500 copies of my games and that's it and I don't do reprints in most cases there have been a couple exceptions so to like completely removing myself from that that model of like you sell to distribution they sell the stores you go to conventions to promote all that I

20:09 don't do any of it um but it's about finding ways to build up your uh your presence and make yourself known and and make it available for people to find you right um for me that that's been more of the Indie approach or what I think of as as the kind of the approach we used to joke that like when we started new Mill it was like the guys who were selling their cassette tapes in the parking lot after a punk show right um and that's always just been kind of how he did it I will say I'm very inspired by like Tokyo game Market games that are printed on like for example business card games there's some games that are you know produced and sent and given to you in an envelope um sometimes in a plastic bag which we did also see at indie game night market um yeah there was one game that was sold that was just a set of rules to be played with a standard deck of cards right and valid good like Indie like approach inie spirit and yeah like definitely yeah very like inspired by like Tokyo game Market um I feel like there are some elements of game design that are only approachable when you're making it by hand like um there's that game open that came out at Tokyo game Market where uh it is a game that literally has like punch holes in the cards and I feel

21:41 like that's like something that like on a on a like publisher level like production level like punch holding the cards feels like such a like a very particular Indie idea um uh and then there's also another game that I think all plays putting out that was also a Tokyo game Market game where it's a rolling right where you stab through the paper oh yo Quest I can't remember what all place is calling it but yeah you you is that the one where you're tearing or the yeah I think it's like you hold the paper up to the light yeah you're tearing yeah right oh it's tearing okay so but but it it's like the idea of using materials in a very unique way such as like holding paper to the light to see on the other side of it it and there's like higher difficulties too where like the paper is thicker or like printed darker on the opposite side um so it's like just very clever the way that people who like work with the materials um have like I don't know they know their like particularities with like what they're working with which is really cool yeah oh and what's funny about open is that another version of it another Edition has been printed by a Japanese publisher and they went with like these fancy dials instead of the the punched holes and the cards and people are like I kind of like the other one better it's like a bigger box now and everything um yeah yeah it's it's kind of funny and I

23:12 think that like we're seeing a lot of American Publishers turning to Tokyo game market now to be like these are the like these are the creative interesting out their weird ideas that are happening in Japan yeah when they could be looking at what we're doing in America too like I think that it's more of just a cultural um limit of like what we allow to be seen in America right um yeah I think their designers are so focused I'm not saying everybody obviously but most designers that that I've talked to up to now um where things are starting to shift are so focused on like what can I design that is going to get me published what can I design that a publisher want to be interested in so they kind of disregard weirder ideas I there's obviously a number of people who are ignoring that and doing what they want and I feel like there is more of a trend to folks getting kind of tired of that like pushing to get published uh concern and they're just like well I just want to make things that I think are neat um but it's riskier like you're spending all this time and then what happens to it right because we don't have a great way to to get these small interesting ideas out there at the moment um until these things like any games Night Market or game Market West or like we're starting to see more of these pop up to give people a way to to kind of sell these these interesting ideas I will say that um on materiality you know my pieces are stamped by hand and you can like really tell through the

24:43 imperfections that this was not screen printed right and I feel really strongly that a product that was made by hand made by one person should feel like it was made by one person made by hand and that those little Perfections actually breathe life into the thing that you made and so I don't really sweat when I have like a d accidentally stamp like a double image onto a piece or accidentally shifted over the stamp I feel like those are the very things that people come for and I feel like it's been proven at least from the way that people reacted to high tide um and I just generally feel like people need to be less afraid to put out work that isn't totally polished that isn't totally like classic publisher bait in a way all right so this conversation about like publisher bait and kind of like doing what you really want to do is very interesting to me because I you know obviously I'm part of the publishing model right like I've got an industry job at a publisher um and before that I was just like a media person right so I was just pick up whatever is interesting do you do you have a preference for how you're working at this point or do you think that you just need a balanced diet of like different design opportunities and then also I mean does the ephemerality of an indie game like a small print run something never to be reprinted does it have a romance for you or do you find it kind of frustrating because we like to think of the things that we make as

26:14 existing for a long period of time maybe even beyond our own lives uh these are such distinct questions I'm going to take the first one and I'm going to try to transition into the second one so the first question you asked was was I uh have ADHD and the thing that I enjoy the most in my experience of the world is and especially in what I get to do in games is that I get to work on a lot of things um I have had you know amazing opportunities to be able like work on many things at once and I actually do enjoy juggling uh the work I find Working on Indie Games working on high tide in particular and now games like it to be like really refreshing because they are very holistically me in a box right um so I feel like like you phrased it it's kind of like a diet for me I want to make things that I know will get out to more people and will be more approachable by even more people um not that that those things and those design teristics don't guide me in the things I I do that I consider weird or smaller or Indie but um you know I I feel like I need both to feel satisfied because I can't just do commercial things U to feel creatively satisfied and if I do only Indie things I'm not going to be able to survive as a

27:44 full-time designer so um my I mean and that's my goal right that's tough man trying to trying to be a full-time designer is just a hard Road um but yeah I think you do have to mix it my personal interest I like I have one publisher that I'll throw I'll show stuff to now before I just decide to do it myself and that's it and if they're not said that's I'm totally fine with it and I'll just do my 500 copy run and end a story right and I'm just way more interested in getting cool stuff out there periodically I don't need it to last forever I'm not looking for evergreens um I'm fine with it getting out there to the three or four or 500 people who want it and then just moving moving on um because for me it's not about leaving a mark necessarily it's about just like getting the thing I want out there and then moving on to the next thing I want to get out there um and I feel like I'm doing that for other people too with my company um I do a combination of new editions of Japanese games that are out of print and then finding designers in the US uh who are doing similarly cool stuff that maybe don't get a lot of exposure and getting their stuff out in the world um and I try to I I do a mix of those thing and then my own stuff too um I do put a little more level of polish on it I think it's a little

29:15 tricky the handmade stuff and like being okay with with things being a little rougher I I totally get that and I and I'm totally on board with that convincing a US audience especially to buy in is a little trickier like there were a couple of games that didn't do as well at the Indie Games Night Market partly because it was at packs unplugged and the customers are folks who are used to conventions at packs unplugged like like packs unplugged right and there was I mean there was one person who bought one of everything and then later was kind of complaining about the level of quality of some of it and I'm like do you not know what this was like so I think convincing people to be okay with things not being quite as shiny and overproduced is a challenge um I think it's an important one to to undertake um especially because you want the night market to be accessible to new designers and better designers right and and open to more ideas and not everything looking the same right like that's a lot of what I'm reacting to and why Japan the scene in Japan is so interesting to me is because you see stuff you would never see here um because they're just willing to take more risks on stuff because they're printing 100 copies and it's for them and like whoever else wants it and I just love that attitude on the like ephemerality of games um this is a space and not just indie game n Market but other Indie markets as well these are opportunities

30:48 for designers to think what can I make with my own hands within this allotted time um for maybe people 30 people 50 people a game for such a small audience how can I capitalize on that and I think that's an interesting design challenge too totally but also like is there something that I can I can get produced for me relatively cheaply like a card game that could look really good and look pretty professional but not cost a bunch of money I can print copies of it yeah so it's just I think there's space for for both of those um and pretty much you know anything the the one thing that I didn't want for the event to be was somebody who had just done a Kickstarter and had a lot of inventory and wanted to push it right like I was pretty explicit that that that's not what this event was for um I don't know there was another event that happened in California um that actually uh I think was held a couple months before ours and I I don't know that he was that the organizer was as explicit about um the goals of that of that event um or his goals were different than mine which is toid but it was very important to me that it wasn't just like folks who were already hustling wanting to find another space to sell their stuff like I wanted new things pushing boundaries like I didn't just want a bunch of trick takers I was so excited when I saw the Pez game like that was the kind of stuff that I wanted to see or um Marcy's game Marsh

32:18 Lan's game with the with the you know the handmade pieces and like I I really wanted to have like a wide range of like this is what Indie Games can be and not yeah not just kind of like pigeon hold into like oh it all has to be handmade or it all has to be printed at gamecrafter you know like I wanted it that variety to kind of introduce people to the idea of looking at games in a different way right and thinking about like how can I get this price as reasonable as possible is a really significant design challenge like right now I'm thinking about what I want to do for the next night market and I'm sourcing pieces and I want to do the stamp thing again and like I even did a you know cost analysis of like uh it's a game that might use dice might not um but I'm like do I if I want to make custom dice for a particular design reason um the cost of that is exponentially like that of that of of what I can make on my own at a smaller unit you know but then you've got the labor cost the time like we had somebody who was planning to bring 20 copies of the game but it took them so long to do each one they wanted bringing seven which whoa technically was like one of my explicit points like you need to bring at least 20 I want people to show up and be able to buy something right and they brought the last minute they were like we're only up seven and like I nothing I can do about it like I still wanted them there but it was a little disappointing I was like well you're not bringing enough to share right and like that's the whole point we want to get

33:49 these games out there and like get people talking about them right it's a it's a Razor's Edge of like how much could you right cost versus time and then like there's ALS there's also these conversations about um pre-orders people want pre-orders people don't want pre-orders uh I think Daniel and I are in pretty similar camps of like thinking that pre-orders are pretty bogus on any games it's so like having reservations is something that definitely happens at Tokyo gay Market but the structure is so different because we had line management issues having somebody with a reservation like getting upset that they had to stand in line even though they had a reservation was causing some issues so uh the folks at pxs were like yeah you can't do reservations next time which is like totally fine but like I understand that reservations help the designers know how many things to print like I take pre-orders on my games every time I do new games on new Mill because I need to make sure that I can sell 500 copies if I'm gonna print 500 right I'm not I don't need 500 pre-orders but like knowing how much how many you think you're going to sell helps you estimate how many you can order so get it from that perspective but the issue came in with like in Tokyo game Market they just open the gates and people go to the booths right this we had it very organized they were letting people in 10 at a time there was a huge line people were stressing out because some folks had said if you don't pick up your reservations by a certain time we're going to release them so they were getting anxious because they weren't going to get there in time so it became this whole issue that we couldn't really

35:20 anticipate and then were not we're just not going to allow it next time people can take reservations if they want but they're going to have to arrange for them to pick up outside that time window right so yeah that's a whole and these are the things that come up when you're running an event like this and figuring out what's going to work and what isn't and for me personally I feel like reservations on these kinds of products like one this is not Kickstarter y like we you're not just getting like a premium product from us you're getting something that was made by us and so I feel like um like leaning into those systems that already exist um just doesn't really I think match with with the vibe and the attitude that we want us as creators to have so that means that the culture of buying also needs to shift too if they want to engage with um because i' you know I feel like um it could be really you know frustrating I think as a buyer to come to a space and think like what if I can't get what I want yep um and that's really hard for us as designers too where it's like I want to make as many copies as possible but like you mentioned before Danel there's labor cost like my body can can only suffer so much to make these pieces that I was able to make 20 copies yeah you've got a job you've got other things you're trying to do like you only have so much time in the day and so um you know I and I specifically planned my you know myself to be done a month in advance before the night market right and no and no later I was like I'm not

36:52 making any pieces after this point um and I stuck to stuck to that because I wanted to avoid burnout um because in this space it's really common for people to want to push themselves really hard and I just didn't want to um be part of that so because I mean I've been part of that in the past and I just feel like um you know we should work hard to make these games but ultimately it's for fun um and the night market is a space to have fun when you're working all right so I want to Circle background of this I feel like y'all's this is like the quintessential problem of like making art uh which is how do you do something for yourself that you also want people to play and to buy uh and so do you think that working in the Indie space gives you more space to do something that's purely for yourself what does that mean and then like what is its value since we're all more or less working Professionals in this field at this point yeah so I feel like I spent a while on social media kind of training people to understand what I do in games to the point where like the folks who pay attention to me know what they're going to get even if I'm putting out something weird and they'll like they'll just pick it up because I did it um but that took years of kind of like just pushing my stuff out there and and like developing kind of a I want to say a brand because that feels really like gross

38:22 but there are definitely like folks out there who are like oh Daniel's got a new game I'll just I'll buy it and that gives me the freedom to kind of do whatever I want to do with it and if they don't want it then they don't want it and I don't care like it just I don't know it uh it is freeing for sure to know that you've got a small audience kind of already built in um and I really rely a lot on that right and a lot of folks you know just just to Weedle back to the reservations thing it's like people who are doing this for the first time want to build that kind of confidence right and they don't have audiences so so I can see why you know it could be really you know beneficial to people to like sort of have that guaranteed profit or money yeah they know they're going to sell at least this many yeah um but I think that's also like to me it's like thinking about the labor cost was important when I'm thinking about pricing the game and stuff but ultimately I think the approach that I try to take with this kind of thing is like I'm not planning to do more than make even right um not everyone can afford to say that that's okay for them abolutely true yeah and that sucks um and you know it's it's it's not a surprise that like you know for the first year we had 26 entrance for a 20 you know number limit next year it's probably going to be even crazier it's going to be more people who are aware of it and and that's what's good

39:53 about like doing this thing again and again it's that more people are going to be able to get the opport to be part of this um you know like Daniel said his process removes you know identification from people so who knows maybe I won't even get into next year because it'll be so hot on competition but um I'm you know mostly trying to think about when for what I contribute to the night market I want to think about how you know people are able to access you know the ability to act as an independent Creator and and sell as an independent creator because right now um it's just limited to who can afford to be there absolutely you know and that sucks um and not to mention that our demographic uh is very weighted towards people from the PGC Discord um which you know I made a rant about this in the past but it's mostly white people mostly hetero men right in that Discord um not to dis the Discord they don't create their community community creates you know less forms itself but um you know it is a problem and I don't know how to solve it uh so the thing that I try to do most is just when I'm talking about these spaces I'm always trying to remind people that hey if you're not white if you're queer if you're non-binary if you're gender non-conforming like you should be a part of this too you know this is a space for us this is something that we can create um so I'm really

41:24 hoping that you know more and more people who don't come from just like a very you know typical um background as a as a designer can see these spaces as approachable um whereas you know sometimes these other spaces are not um that said there's still barriers and I don't and I'm still trying to figure out or or learn more about what we can do um I think that's true in The Wider kind of game design sense also right right um and again like a lot of that comes down to who has free time right right women tend not to have free time versus exactly exactly because in our society women are you know given the role of caregiver home maker you know um so it's it's just the kind of thing where it's like these are real barriers that get in the way of people saying I can make a game I can go out and pitch the game but things like Night Market actually do make these things more accessible than they've ever been before and the more that we support them yeah being still it's still expensive right so you have to go to a convention you probably have to stay in a hotel you might have to pay for a flight like there's a lot of hidden expenses and it's uh it's tough and and the our country is so big I think one of the reasons the Tokyo game Market is so successful is Japan is a relatively small country so you could be in other parts of Japan and make it to Tokyo without too much trouble um but the

42:56 United States is massive and like we did have people we had at least one designer from California um we had people from all over but the guy from California was like I don't think I could actually afford to do this again here it's just it's so expensive and like having to carry his games which was just a box full of dice like he was limited to how many he could bring by like by the weight of the suitcase and like all these Logistics that made it actually really difficult for him um so like ideally you'd have these things popping up regionally right and to make it more access accessible like like mareline saying for more people um but we got to start somewhere this one made sense a lot a lot of sense for me because it's it was local to me so it's a two-hour drive so I was able to like Drive stuff in um I know the organizers like knowing people helps you get these things off the ground um but I want nothing more than to see more people kind of take a hold of this and and start their own in other places and I've already had conversations with folks who who are starting to talk about doing it so so on this note if you are somebody who just buys games that look cool and you haven't really thought about this before and you're thinking hey like I would like to support more Indie creators I would like to see more of these kind of edgy small print run like experimental games in this world what are things that normal people can do to help the Indie community and to get involved oh man that's such a big question I don't even know how to answer that like yeah you just got very hard look right like keep your eyes open like

44:27 look out look for stuff you know there are a couple of discords out there Marceline mentioned the the Portland game Collective Discord which is very much focused on um trick taking games and climbing games and stuff like that it's become um a bit more focused on the acquisition of games I think than right a real discussion of them anymore um right that was huge I started getting into it it's sort of the the problem I was pointing out earlier where it's like the culture of buying almost like not quite evolving in the same way that the culture of creating is but um yeah I don't know how do you find out about Indie music like how do you find out about writers or movies that aren't mainstream like you just have to kind of dig for it and and I would say social media is one thing um friends of friends if you like know somebody who makes things i s if if you're one of the 10% of people who play games and know somebody who makes things you should be retweeting their things you should be quote tweeting their things saying like hey this person makes really cool stuff I just want everyone to know about it even if your follower count is like 15 people like it just helps helps motivate it helps motivate it's not about follower accounts it's not about it's just like being active and letting people know how much you love their stuff or you like their stuff even if it's just the way looks or if you just

45:58 want to support who they are you know that those are saying something you know doing something saying something being active in a as a community member because that's what everyone is um that those things really help Indies um and it also helps other people find the niche that you know maybe you're part of um also you know there's going to be more like Indie markets popping up around the country so those are other ways to support um going on their BGG pages and thumbing up their their posts or their yeah anything to raise awareness right yeah subscribe to their games and just take chances on stuff that looks weird and isn't right necessarily it's not and if it's not to your expectation don't rate it on BGG if you don't like it don't rate it you know those things really impact you know someone with a small audience um and I think people don't really quite understand that um level of kind of like impact that an individual rating can actually have on a game um because it's so visible and so public um so if you don't like something you know it's possible to just keep it to yourself um and I could probably think of you know even like high-profile games where people can probably just you know have an inside thought and not share their opinions on the internet um and so you know I think that that is true for indie games too you know only

47:29 it's multiplied because the because of how small the you know Community is how loud one can be is Amplified yeah and then one more kind of like I guess one more question before we get to sort of sum up and then and then softy stuff which is so you know marcelene high tide found a publisher yeah and Daniel did did you say earlier in the show that one of your games from um Night Market or an indie game of yours has gotten picked up by a larger publisher as well um I mean I've had games like in the past uh get signed with Publishers for sure uh my game Mory um was one of the allplay like when they did the four trick takers last year I think and that was one that I was I was probably just GNA do on my own and then I pitched it to them and they're like yeah let's do it and I so I'm constantly showing them my stuff and if you know occasionally they they bite um but yeah know at this point most most of the time I'll just I'll I'll do my games on my own um because I have this kind of built-in audience and like I'm fine with you know selling 500 copies of it or whatever but how does getting it picked up change your relationship with your game I feel more distanced from it usually because what I'll do if I sign it to a publisher I just it's theirs now right like you send me the money and that's your game um when I'm doing it myself I'm the one putting it in the envelope and sending it to people and like I'm getting more of the feedback directly um so it is different I I

49:00 definitely feel more removed from stuff that I've signed versus with like Mory you know people are going to tell allplay how much they like that game exactly yeah uh they're not going to tell you even though your name is on the box y yeah it's very small on the box which wild is like going to Japan and having folks who have discovered Mor in Japan get really excited when I'm there and like want me to sign the box like that's pretty cool um so yeah it's different it's different uh it you know the the one thing about signing with a publisher is that it does get more eyes on it they're printing a lot more copies than I would um and they're sending them to places that I I wouldn't have expected um so that's that's pretty neat um yeah I I would say for me well one I think it's just a matter of like supply and demand for me like I purely cannot keep making this you would have to change your your method of production in order to right I I would just completely change and I don't want to be a publisher like Dani like I don't want to worry about the logistics of that stuff because my brain doesn't want to think about any of that um and so I you know I just purely want to design and you know send it out into the world and uh whether it be through a publisher or through um an imprint like Daniel's like little dog um I might you know prer that way more than I might prefer um solo publishing yeah um

50:31 especially because you know board games are heavy they require pieces usually they they're not as like you not they're not like Zen where they can be produced really cheaply and easily and and shared really easily uh either as a PDF or just like literally just like here take this piece of paper that I I folded obviously the the scale of uh Community is like quite different in those spaces but um you know now that uh I and I I had to I'm just going to circle back a little bit to like the experience at the night market I had to turn and look at so many people in the eyes and tell them that I was out of copies and so many people were really disappointed you know people have told me that they came to the market for my game they were like highly anticipating my game and it made me feel so bad that I couldn't like fulfill everybody um and so you know I I did get to be like but I do have like the bring your own pieces version but people want the pieces so um it did like raise a lot of Hope by saying like the game was signed by a publisher um before the market had begun so uh to me it's not something I expected to happen I did not expect this kind of game to be um publishable because it's an abstract game but something about the combination of the way it looks the way it plays the way it like kind of presents itself as a type of game as a travel game um at it kind of like cemented it as a as an idea of a product in the eyes of a publisher so

52:02 it's like this thing that I didn't know or didn't even consider could be a product someone saw it that it could be and just ran with it have you talk to the publisher about how they're going to produce it are you GNA have much say of like the physicality of it yeah they're really respectful of what I my needs are and what my desires are for it we're we're currently going through things like um what kind of methods of of production for like materials like how are we going to reproduce the effect um in my pieces of like having stamped it and other like bigger more philosophical questions about like the difference between indie game creation and uh publication where for them the expectations of a published prod fully produced game are much higher than that of IND game so having like little imperfections on the tiles while creates Aura and makes us like feel like there's life in this thing that was created for a shiny published game people will complain they'll think that it's a defect um you know people joke on the internet about like oh like people who send their boxes back because it has a slight ding you know they have a new box sent to them um those people should just realize that they have a limited edition copy of you know um I think that's pretty funny and definitely should be the way that people approach these things instead of like treating everything every resource in the world

53:33 as something that can just be like I know I paid good money this should be pristine right like that's the attitude yeah and and uh while I think that's like sad that like I can't just say like yeah just make the game exactly the way I made it um that's just not the reality of both commercialization and yeah like all kinds of stuff manufacturing yeah all right so one more one more real question so for people who are interested in maybe doing game design uh as people who have worked across the full spectrum of game making and game publishing um what are your tips for people who maybe want to do something a little weird uh well Daniel and I both have signed games from button shy and I think that the best space to look at in terms of just being a part of their Community like specifically their design Community because the design Community there it it's based upon giving and getting right if you're going to if you want to receive feedback you should consider giving feedback right and people really notice it's not like like if you're a regular of the space people know who you are you know um and so if you know you are interested in making games that would be a space to look at if not just to like get your

55:05 feet wet in testing people's games um usually these are games for like small player count and and for people who don't know what button shy is like these are 18 Card Wallet games so uh if you've never designed a game before approaching your first design is 18 cards is the most approachable way to consider making game it was the first game I ever made as an adult was um an 18 card game through for through um button Shy's holiday no not the holiday contest it was their legacy contest um that was like in 2020 and so uh to get from 2020 to where I am now it couldn't have really started in any other way in my mind other than with button shy um and I do think that you know if you need design advice there's a lot of great people there um including people who work for button shy so I think that that would be the space I would look at um specifically their Discord um if you can get on their Discord server it should be available on their website definitely take a look yeah I button shy is a great place to start having that 18 card um kind of constraint is really useful to kind of narrow your kind of design brain and like have you focus in on something they were the first publisher uh who signed one of my games my first published game was was through button shy um so I have a lot of a lot of respect and and uh good feelings towards them um yeah I think just getting becoming part of a design Community whatever that

56:36 looks like for you having you know the play test groups all over the place that you can join definitely like I Echo Marceline's um you know give feedback if you expect to get feedback um because that's a lot of give and take there but yeah just finding like a group of people that you can work on games with help each other out like that's huge for moving forward as a designer I always say give more than you get absolutely um and that's true not just in prototyping but in life you know yeah I mean I went to Art School like we did we did critiques all the time so like I got very used to that but it's that's a new thing for a lot of people is is giving feedback and taking feedback right and that that entire like philosophy can be applied in so many things in life for and I honestly think that the best people utilize that as much as possible um so just be one of those people be generous with yourself to yourself with others um with your thoughts with your mind with your heart and I think that people notice but I think if you want to design something weird just just start working on it try it right like a game isn't a game until you get it out of your head um agreed so yeah don't be afraid to just kind of mess around it's gonna be bad at first most of the time make bad games but yeah it's worth it like you may learn something it may be totally unplayable but you're like well this part of it is really interesting so what can I do with this part of it right and you just kind of build off of that um I wouldn't even bother necessarily

58:07 finding a group of designers to learn from honestly the best you could do is just playing with your friends and seeing what they like um or like looking at the games that you grew up playing you know or like in high school or something a lot of people start by making house rules of of other games that they enjoy playing right or variance or whatever and that's a way to kind of exercise those design muscles and feel like you know try to get a feel for what it's like to to start designing um right I think classic card games are good place to start um B like BS rumy um things like that or you know coup social deduction games werewolf those are good places to start too just start really slow and don't expect yourself your the first thing you do to work or good um I think when we say Scrappy we don't necessarily mean like bad is what we do but um I think what we do is bleeding edge and it's like sometimes you get a little blood on yourself when you're working that close to a knife but also like you know look think about what you haven't seen in games right like that's if you're looking to do something kind of weird and offbeat like like look at what's missing like what would you like to see what kind of game would be interesting to you that you haven't seen anybody work on right like try Thinking by like sub subtraction right what is missing is such a good point um what has never been done before

59:39 what tool has never been used before I I once played a a a game by somebody that used a ruler right and it's just a purely a ruler game like try to make a game that no one has ever made before you know I think people are really impressed by uh that game that came out from cmk last year called Luna game where you just drop a bunch of stuff in the middle of the table and then you play a game it's like genius um so just try to like be like oh that's my hook I just want to drop a bunch of stuff on the table that's and like just try to find out how do I design around that how do I make a game out of that um make like weird interactions things that people say noises that people make um make make that into a somehow you know want to do that with a lot of my trick taking games I often start with like well I haven't seen this done or I haven't seen this done this way like let me see what I can build around this idea right but it always starts with this like oh here's something I haven't seen or here's something that I haven't like I haven't seen combined so in the Quest for things that you haven't seen uh time for some softy questions what are I I want to hear about a game or two that y'all played recently that brought you some joy that was exciting for you what have I played recently yeah I know now I have to I'm going to go on to BGG or something uh what did I even play recently so what I've played recently my wife and I have

1:01:10 been playing these um masters of crime series from Cosmos uh who does the they do the exit games and these are another kind of like mystery solving thing it's like cooperative and you're going through this deck of cards and you're making decisions about like um uh you know you're you're Mafia or something and you can either you know ask this guy you know where the what's it is or or you can threaten him and you're like making these decisions and it's narrowing your space and you're getting rewarded for certain things and it's just like walking through like a crime story and they've just been really fun just the two of us to do like in the evening or whatever um and then I've also been teaching my in-laws uh like large player count trick ticking games like Seas of Str wife and and vampire queen and like so they know how to play bridge but I'm getting them into weird Japanese trick takers at like family events and it's just been really funny like watching them learn how to play charms which was a game I published which was an out of print Japanese game from like 10 years ago that like blew my mind when I first played it and they're able to handle it eventually and then I see they're playing it like when I wasn't around and like that's been really wild just like see them embracing what I'm doing and getting into like just these weird games that they would otherwise have no exposure to this past weekend I've been playing I played um through the desert for the first time and like as somebody who just

1:02:40 like loves most canencia games samurai has always been the one that I'm like I don't need to play the other the other tile layer ones because I I I found mine this is this is the one I mean solid and then I play through the desert I'm like through the desert's really good I don't think it's as good as Samurai in my mind but it's really good through the deserts the pastel camels one that's right yeah it's funny like the people I played with they're not like the typical like BGG crowd and they also said that they would like to eat these pieces so I think unival yeah it's just a universal feeling I also want to eat the pieces in Samurai well I I used to have the like original one that were these like black resin like licorice yeah like some kind of hard candy and I was like I just want to eat them yeah and I also recently played Blood on the clock tower where I got absolutely fooled by the bad guys um on turn one I was poisoned and I was the investigator so I received key information that was entirely false and I was poisoned at random which is wild um so so a lot of false accusations were thrown around and I was playing with a lot of people who were new to the game so I was like one of the voices who like I've played this game before this is these are the worlds I see this is what's going on and I was totally unaware that I was not I didn't have any valid

1:04:12 information um I highly recommend uh watching the series um by uh is it Ross has a podcast or something like they have like a blood on the clock tower play play by um Survivor players and it's very entertaining oh that sounds good it's very very entertaining um speaking of I I am really excited for the upcoming Survivor uh card game from exploding kittens and I have not been excited for an exploding kitten game literally ever so um probably not since I first played exploding kittens in like high school so um this yeah Survivor card game I if you couldn't tell I'm just like a big Survivor fan now um but yeah I think Survivor uh season for 50 no season 49 is coming up and yeah I'm just really excited for for more of that show and games around it amazing and then uh for people who want to find y'all and follow your work online uh where do you most like to be found um I am on Blue Sky at DNL n wmn that's my name without vowels uh and then my website is new Mill industries.com and that's where I sell all these crazy trick- ticking and climbing shedding games uh I am on blue sky I'm on Discord

1:05:44 I'm on uh I don't know all kinds of places literally anywhere you could think to search my name you could probably find me CU I am like Liz also terminally online uh and so you could find me at Marceline Lyman pretty much anywhere that is m a r CE l i n e Lyman l i m m fantastic and yes I am terminally online so if you're looking for B hopefully you already know but I can be found anywhere as Beyond solitire Daniel Marceline thank you both so much for coming on and talking about Night Market I can't wait for it next year I guess I better get in line early yeah it's been a blast yeah it's definitely happening the next Pack's unplugged uh November 22nd super exciting we've confirmed it so amazing so everybody out there if you're going to paxu next year please plan on going to Night Market uh and until then please like subscribe comment ask questions and most of all happy gaming oh