Alita Robertson embarks on Leder's new era with KART - TCbH Interview

0:00 I think I changed my title to producer within a month of cart being green lit. So, hello and welcome back to another episode of the Cardboard Herald. My chance to talk with creative gamers and game creators. And I'm so glad to be joined today by Alita Robertson of Leader Games. Alita, welcome to the show.

0:30 Thank you for having me. This is so exciting.

0:32 Yeah, I I've spoken to many of your colleagues and former colleagues in the past. Um, Leader Games, of course, is, you know, a huge name in the game industry, but I'm particularly excited to be talking to you, uh, because your history with the company and kind of the unique state that Leader is in right now as they're kind of embarking on a new stage with the game that you designed and you're producing. We're talking about cart today. What What's your elevator pitch about this game?

1:02 Cart is a downhill racing game where you don't have an engine, but you don't really have many brakes either. Uh you're going faster and faster as gravity takes hold and trying to dodge obstacles, uh dodge each other, and cause as much trouble and make it to the end in one piece.

1:20 I love that beautiful pitch. I actually have quite a few questions that dovetail into specifically what you talked about there, but I I want to get a little bit of history about you first. So, it's my understanding, Alita, that you started with the leader as an intern. Is that right?

1:38 Yeah.

1:38 Yeah.

1:39 Yeah. I was an intern way back. Yeah.

1:42 Well, how way back is way back?

1:45 Uh, let's see. I was first hired five years ago.

1:49 Okay. Well, in terms of board games, that might as well be ancient history.

1:53 It's one, it's about halfway through our company's history. Uh, so I was originally hired as an intern, technically a computer science internship.

2:03 Uh, and then I was asked back for the next year and then asked back as a contractor the next year and then it turned into a full-time position.

2:11 What were your aspirations for working in the game industry? Is this something that you actually purposefully set out to do or were you just looking for computer science uh or related gigs that you could get and leader happened to be there?

2:25 So, I had worked in uh board game retail for

2:29 probably two or three years at that point. Uh it was kind of

2:33 I intended it to just be the summer job between high school and college and then it ended up being the entirety of college job. But it was fantastic. Uh Games by James is a local board game company. They're really well integrated with the game design scene and they try really hard to uplift uh local designs and stuff. So, I knew very much about Leader Games as a local company communicating with another local company. Uh but I knew them as in I designed the like here's the stuff that we design in Minnesota shelves at board game retail stores. So, I knew them a bit and then as we were getting Oath in stock at the end of its Kickstarter,

3:18 uh, I was like, "Wait, they have a listing for internships." And so, I looked into that. I negotiated with my computer science professor that this would totally count

3:29 uh for college credit. Uh, and then I applied. Uh, I was lucky enough to be chosen. Uh myself and Kaylee Williams were the interns that summer. Uh she's a artist uh and was kind of focusing more on shadowing Kyle and stuff and then I focused more on uh the initial stages of arcs and the initial development on that game.

3:54 Uh that was kind of one of the early COVID years. So it was their [clears throat] first time having an internship after co but we still didn't go to Jen Con. And so they were like, "Well, you guys didn't see normal work at the game company." Uh, so they brought us back the next year.

4:15 Uh, and then Yeah, that's history.

4:19 Yeah. What What was your zone of gaming when you started working at your local game store? Was it predominantly board games? Were you a Magic Player, Pokemon, you know, like what brought you into the world of gaming?

4:33 Mostly board games. uh a little bit of tabletop RPGs, but uh that was very much why I really was into Oath was the kind of storytelling aspect and

4:49 how that history and narrative combined.

4:52 Uh but very much board games. Uh the like longtime favorite is uh Lords of Water Deep.

5:00 We just played Lords of Water Deep the other day. Uh it's it's uh an absolute favorite in this household. My wife would say it's her all-time favorite game. Um and you know it it's a little musty and crusty these days, but it's still it still hits the table. It's still a fave.

5:19 Yeah, it's one it's it's such an era board game, but it's one that [clears throat]

5:24 I just still truly love and it's so wonderful to get back to the table.

5:29 Yeah, absolutely. I I am kind of flabbergasted that the recent printing I want to say is it Renegade took over printing of that. Um I'm so shocked that there's no updates to it either. Even like functional usability updates. I mean the box is weird. The the storage is always been weird. Um there are some art assets that are a little funky in the game. like I it seemed like such an opportunity to do like a second edition of the game, but hey, I'm just glad that it's being made and people can play it. I think it's still great. Uh I'm a Scoundrels of Skullport die hard. Uh Under Mountain can Under Mountain can just kind of sleep in the box for me, but uh it's fine, but it ain't my scoundrels of Skullport. Um yeah, that that's going to be one of those that stick around forever. But

6:21 that that that's not that's not what we're here to talk about. as cool as Lords of Water Deep is. So, until you're actually working on the Lords of Water Deep second edition, um we'll keep that tucked away for now. Um so, how how's your career trajectory going to the point where you're actually pitching games to uh well, I guess leader as a whole? We were wrapping up oath uh wrapping up or new foundations uh wrapping up the root homeland uh and we ended up not going with take as our next project. We're kind of in a bit of a lull where we

6:59 were kind of looking for projects. were kind of looking for opportunities and we were kind of throwing around pitches and our senior developer Nick Brockman uh was tossing around he's had an idea for a while that he keeps trying to bring to the table and never like quite latched on of what if the kids from the Fort game had a race.

7:21 Yeah.

7:22 And just had a race in the neighborhood and everyone comes around, we all see it. Uh, and he was like, "This this prompts up for adoptions. Here's like the 10 things I think might be true about that game." So, we wanted to have it. No joke, I'm swimming laps uh at the Diamond Pool here uh right near my house less than an hour ago and thinking about this interview and I was thinking is this game a spiritual successor or like a continuation of the story of the kids from Fort because that seems so logical that it would be uh and that's one of my questions I have written down right in front of me. So there you go. You've already answered one of those questions. Sorry to interrupt. Please continue.

8:07 Yeah. Yeah. So, it's very much uh a little bit inspired by Fort uh

8:13 basically no shared mechanics, but shared

8:16 of course

8:16 energy at all.

8:17 Spirit has it always been a downhill racer because uh from the first time that I heard anything about this game, um I've always seen downhill associated with it. And I think when you know most people uh think of cart racing their mind immediately has to think about like video game cart racers you know Mario Kart the uh Sonic Diddy Kong racing those kinds of things which are not downhill um and are motorized and have like certain baggage associated with it. Whereas this from the get- go, at least that I've heard, has been always about this downhill element. And what you were describing uh in your elevator pitch was that continues escalation of um of speed, of franticness.

9:10 Has that always been a core component of vision of this that the downhill theme would feed directly into how the game plays? Yeah, it's I think from the very first prototype it's been downhill.

9:27 It's one It hasn't always been gravity powered.

9:29 Okay.

9:30 But it's always been a one-way track.

9:32 Sure.

9:33 A very much you can't go backwards. You are stuck in your position. But it was only like

9:40 it was pretty early on, but it was a little bit until it was like

9:43 the gravity should be the thing that matters and powers everything and pulls everything towards its conclusion. But it was very much a we're at the top of the hill, let's move down uh and try to get the best combo of things along the way and avoid the worst stuff, enjoy the best stuff.

10:06 Yeah. So,

10:07 not fall apart by the end. Nick throws out this idea of something that uh anyone could take a a shot at and uh leader is kind of figuring out what they want to do next. Uh and what inspires you? Like is it just something that kind of grew on you as you were working on other stuff? Did you take that challenge as I I don't care what it is. I need to take a stab at what this game is. like what inspired you as a producer at Leader to say I'm going to do a design for this?

10:44 I think it was really quick. That one really captured me that initial pitch. Uh and so I I think by lunchtime the next day, I had a fully working prototype.

10:58 I was like, I'm making you guys play this with me.

11:01 Excellent. Excellent. I don't know if it'll work, but

11:04 I stole a bunch of assets from cart uh or from Fort. I drew some my own icons. I think it'll at least function. I think we'll get to the end of a race.

11:13 I don't think it'll be good, but we will race.

11:16 Uh we also had a couple other projects we were looking at at the time. One of which became uh what's going to be coming down next to the line? Kaiu or Cru. We'll see what it gets named. But that one really stuck with me. And I think I think it was like one or it was within the month I remember having a phone call to my mom and being like I think we're just going to do it. I think it's just going to be card. We were still in discussions about like six games, but I was like, I think this is going somewhere. I think this is becoming very fun and becoming its own unique little thing.

11:58 Did you have aspirations to become one of the game designers when you first [clears throat] signed on with leader or did you think that you would be support staff or or doing other things at the company?

12:09 More so support staff and other things at the company. I was hoping to continue to get uh to develop a bit uh because I was one of the junior developers on uh Oath New Foundations and uh one of the developers on Root Clockwork. I was hoping to just kind of continue to do that on the side and work on more of the kind of scheduling streams uh overall like staff allocation and figuring out all those things between ops and creative. But uh I think I changed my title to producer within a month of cart being green lit. So

12:46 you were talking to your mom about this like uh you know like you went to college for computer stuff. Have your parents always been really supportive of uh your like career path? Can they wrap their head around, oh well, Alita is making cart racing board games about kids racing carts. I guess that's what her job now.

13:13 They're honestly pretty good at about it. It's fun.

13:17 Good.

13:17 It was technically I also got a degree in theater, so I think they're not all theater.

13:24 All right.

13:25 They're like, "Oh, an office job was off."

13:27 Sure. Yeah. Excellent. All right. I love it.

13:30 Um, no, that that that's uh great.

13:34 So, you got uh cart green lit. Uh, do you remember whenabouts that was?

13:41 I think we settled on it probably around March.

13:47 Okay. So I I don't want to make this uh all about uh this but I think a big elephant uh in the room uh for leader is that this is the first project since kind of the great schism right you know like uh Cole uh has uh left Kyle has left I mean like and what leader was doing. Um it seemed like Fort was kind of an anomaly of a game, right? Uh compared to the types of games that Leader had been making.

14:27 Um whereas in some ways this is kind of a return to what Leader was doing when I first met Patrick and interviewed him for his upcoming game, Vast that was not even called Vast at the time. And it was uh you know like a a game that felt like a huge departure from the types of games that Leader was making up until that point. So, you know, like how cognizant were you of this kind of being the debut into whatever new identity that Leader had going forward after this very public schism is probably a charged word, but you know, I don't want to color it as like something where it was a civil war within Leader, but it was certainly something that was very public that some of the creative minds that people associate directly with company are now elsewhere. there you are now at the helm of the game that is showing what is leader doing now moving forward is that a lot of pressure are you cognizant of that uh you know is that uh something that you guys talk about like how you want to present this in a way

15:42 oh definitely yeah it's one

15:44 it's definitely pressure um

15:48 I'm excited and honored to be

15:51 entrusted with that kind of moment in time, but also

15:55 it is a little scary. It's going to be interesting to see.

16:00 I mean, Kickstarter preview page went up today as we're recording this, but uh starting to see what of the audience we retain and what goes away. It's one it's interesting to try to find the creative voice without uh kind of some of the taken for granted through lines where it's

16:26 I mean Kyle's hand is so distinct as an artist. Uh

16:31 so what does it mean when we actually have to say well what parts of this are what our games look like versus what parts of this is just what Kyle's style is.

16:41 Yeah. Of course. and try to like kind of define that and start doing all these different parts and finding those like yeah, it's been an interesting exploration and I'm really pleased with the direction Kakar takes. I feel like it's within the canon

17:00 in a way that I'm very pleased with it. I'd say it sits narratively between

17:06 uh probably a Hoy and Fort

17:08 in a way that I'm very pleased with. Uh, but it's one it's also just timewise we had to be very strategic about choosing a few games that are a little lighter that can be completely airtight and welldesigned and well-developed uh on a shorter time scale than we usually do because one of our goals as a part of this was to try to start tightening up the what we have available and ready to show when we launched Kickstarter. So, we wanted to make sure that as there are questions about who we are as a company uh going forward and stuff that we would be able to like on day one launch a Kickstarter have stuff to show and make sure that we typically I mean we've launched Kickstarters before with no board, no box covers.

18:02 Right. Right.

18:05 Here's a description of like what the vibe's going to be. uh [clears throat] these are some things we think might make it to the final box. Uh trust us,

18:13 right?

18:13 So trying to make sure that we get a more wholesome view of what the final product is going to be and that it's like 95% of the way there and it's inviting people still into a little bit of the development, a little bit of participation in the creation of the thing, but also the large audience will see it as it's fully done. and trying to find [clears throat] something that we could be really proud of under that timeline meant that this is probably going to be on the lighter half of our catalog, but it also makes it so that we have time to do all the heavier things that we still are really excited about uh so that we can keep expanding both sides. One of the through lines of leader games to me has always been I mean if we can use [clears throat] abstract terminology is aspirational uh weirdness you know like it's playing in spaces with uh board games where it feels innovative but not just iterating on pre-existing ideas but actually taking big gamles on what games can be. And that's true with even smaller designs. Even smaller designs that are readapting or reimagining a game like Fort, you know, like that that was a pre-existing game, but it's still capturing, you know, what could deck building look like? What's a funky way that we can

19:44 twist this concept and come out with something that feels new and imaginative and like I said, aspirational in its weirdness. In what way do you think that Cart is a game that aspires to do something really new and interesting and and different than what people have seen before or what they might expect out of later games?

20:14 I think it's really special to me because it feels so in the world of itself. Uh it it every time there was a design question, it turned back to reality to physics.

20:29 What what does it mean to be careening down to have gravity take hold of you? Uh how does steering and movement work and how can we play with that? Uh it's very much a it's something that I haven't seen done in races before is the or race games to truly be 98% about the steering.

20:56 Whereas I know when I'm going fast, that's the part that's scariest. It's taking those turns, taking those corners.

21:05 And so it was really cool to try to be like, what if the race is only that? It's who can steer the best, who can take the best risks in the right moments and try to wow the crowd and finish first and how do you ek out a lead and something like that?

21:25 Practically speaking, what are some of the like decisions that you had to make about designing this game? You know, like some people are going to think about a race game and they need to have, you know, miniatures on a on a board where you're moving them along. Some people are fine with just having that in an abstract concept. Like what is the act of playing this game without getting too desperately in the weeds of actually uh explaining the entirety of how the game works, but you know, like what does this game feel like to play? What does it look like at the table? and you know like what were some of the decisions that landed there?

22:05 Yeah, so the race itself is a set of five backyards in the neighborhood. Each have their own kind of character. Uh one might have the hot tub with the weird statues. One's a muddy garden full of horrible cabbages. Uh and you kind of start at the top of the hill all all the players. Uh, and you start slowly speeding up.

22:30 Uh, and as you're navigating each turn,

22:34 you're increasing your speed

22:36 and losing a little bit more control.

22:39 And then the control is used to kind of activate the stuff on your dashboard uh to try to start to turn, try to break, try to activate any of the weird things that you've picked up along the way. And then you have a moment in time where you can start trying to like add on things. So you might grab a bucket of water balloons and like attach that to your ability to turn left. So you put that on your left wheel. Now every time you turn left, you're also throwing a water balloon. But

23:11 as you start to crash, things might fall off, things will get damaged, things will get harder to use. And so you're trying to balance out the timing of all that because when things fall off, it does get a little easier to navigate. It gets a little cheaper. Uh

23:28 and stuff might propel you a little bit. Uh, but you're very much trying to balance the timing of taking some risks, but also trying to There's an audience, there's a crowd, they're all kind of cheering, but depending on who showed up that day, they might be a little more interested in you ramming into each other in a muddy finish, uh, a very pristine cart. They might be looking for different things that might give you like just a little bit of a tie break at the end. So, it's trying to balance out the can I just get to the finish really quickly or can I get to the finish quickly and impress uh the

24:08 crowd? Yeah.

24:11 The basketball boys would love to see you make a basket on the way.

24:15 Right. Right. It's it's not enough just to finish the play. You got to do so with gusto. Um what was the hardest nut to crack in this game? like once you had the skeleton of the game and you needed to figure out how to take it from something that was a good idea into a good game, what was that and how did you figure it out? I think the hardest one over the course of the whole game has been how do you control this thing and how do you limit that without making the player feel like

24:49 it's pointless or it's not

24:52 it's not their fault that they failed or that there's no choice but to fail,

24:57 right?

24:58 But also

24:59 lead them into making the decisions to crash. And so the game started as more of a like hand builder, deck builder, uh, card shedddter sort of game where I kept running up against the thing where the deck had to be so thin because basically every draw you kind of needed to have a left and a right.

25:22 Yes. Yeah.

25:23 And so statistically there's like nothing you could do with that. there was so little that you could add into that to make your decks different to feel unique uh to kind of customize your cart. Uh so we started to kind of pivot to tableau system and that was also fun but it also had the problem of it would balloon up. There'd be all this stuff dents increase the cost of things. So everything's bad, everything's terrible, uh everything's expensive,

25:57 right?

25:58 Uh and it also wasn't feeling like quite like the point of tension. It felt like you could avoid damaging your steering in a way that felt a little boring to me. You could kind of protect your best parts and

26:12 kind of slough things a little bit. It just wasn't quite hitting. And then I think it was Tyler and Nick, we were talking. was what if you only have the kind of slots or amount of cards that you start with

26:29 and every time you get a new ability, a new upgrade, it has to be attached to one of those. And so that's really kind of unlocked it where it's how do you kind of trap yourself in these little sequences of events where it's like you are more powerful but

26:46 every time you do this thing you also have to do something else and

26:52 you have to pay extra. You

26:55 you're kind of building out combos that feel really good when they hit but also

27:01 you got to keep on spinning the plates at that point. Yeah, you might not always want to do some of these things. You might not always want to like slide one to the left uh whenever you're trying to like repair a dent on the brake or something. And so [snorts] that really unlocked things and is probably going to be the version that goes to print. With this being your first game uh that you'll get published, was there any kill your darlings moment in this game? Like something that you were really convinced like this is so cool, but then you know your your colleagues, uh you play testers, someone was just like, "This ain't it." Like I I know you love this, but this ain't it.

27:49 You've got to drop this.

27:50 My precious arches, I miss them so much. Uh they weren't ever good,

27:56 but I loved them. I feel like aesthetically they added a lot to the board to have like beautiful golden arches in different spots. Uh because

28:06 kind of one of the other things that was kind of interesting to try to solve was what are the reasons for players not to take the optimal path, right?

28:14 What incentive is there to not just see the board be okay, I go straight as much as possible. Uh, and one of the versions was arches. And arches would kind of alternate sides, always following the most difficult path. And it was if you take the harder path, you get a new tool. You get a new tool to deal with the hill. Uh, or you might get some points depending on the version, but uh, they were kind of bad. Uh it it was one if they're points, everybody went for them and kind of it was like no choices occurred.

28:55 Yeah.

28:56 Uh if it wasn't points, no one went for them.

28:59 And that kind of wasn't the balance I wanted to go for. It

29:03 it felt sad that the person who went the fastest never got to do any customization of their vehicle. They never got to play around with it. So carts had to die or I mean Arches needed to die.

29:16 Yeah.

29:16 Uh it was tragic. I'm still getting some copies from the factory for my personal copy.

29:25 Awesome. Well, maybe that's one of those things that you can continue iterating on and with uh cart success maybe uh we'll we'll get uh some introduction of them later on. uh as you know every good board game deserves an expansion these days. Um well you know like again with this being your your first design and kind of an a change of career trajectory for you as you evolve from uh intern and doing the support computer stuff to eventually becoming uh producer game designer for the debut game of this new era of leader. I was hoping that maybe you could impart like what is some of the best advice that you've gotten in general about the world of game design that has really helped you get to this point um that maybe that can help give someone else a leg up as they're starting their own journey.

30:23 It's a lot of stubbornness. It's really you are going to make many versions of a game that's bad. You just have to make a few that get better each time [clears throat]

30:39 and trying to find the moments that you can like shine with spit and get it from better to good and then get it from good to great. It's a slow and lengthy process that just requires a lot of grit, a lot of uh polishing because you only have to have like one good idea a week, but you will have to wave through 20 bad ideas. Uh, it's a lot of just continuing to work at it, continuing to pick at it, and letting it simmer, talking about it, and then writing those things down is the other secret to it. It's there's a lot of tenacity and I think a lot of people can design games. I think anyone can design games, but it's the giving it the patience, giving it the stick to it, and giving it the true stubbornness to bring it all the way to its full potential.

31:40 That's great.

31:41 And knowing the path. Yeah.

31:44 Well, Alita, I I'm so happy for you. I have no doubt that uh card is going to be successful. There's certainly going to be a lot of eyes on this. Uh, and uh, I really hope that uh, it's received extremely well. We'll be covering it uh, on our channel. Um, and uh, you mentioned uh, the creature control or whatever it'll eventually be. Uh, we'll also be covering that down in the future, which isn't too long because you guys at Leader are now kicking out these games like crazy. Um, but I'm so excited for where your career goes from here, uh, both behind the scenes and as game designer at Leader. And I hope when we're next at a convention together, we can get Lords of Water Deep to the table. Alita, thanks for coming to the show.

32:31 Thank you so much for having me. This has been wonderful. Hey everybody.