BOARD GAMES 2: Making our prototype

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1:08a partner. Welcome to the Exploding Kittens office. Our basic question here is, can we make a board game and where do we start? I think what the next step here is we do some homework and you do some homework. Your homework is give us three themes that are interesting to you. I'm curious to see what you come back with.

1:32So we talked roughly what, two weeks ago, three weeks ago? Yeah, somewhere in there. That is the voice of Elan Lee, game designer and co-founder of the Exploding Kittens Game Company. Because we are making a board game, we are partnering with Exploding Kittens, and we've got big dreams. To make the kind of game that anyone would want to play. To make a game that has big economic ideas baked into it. And Exploding Kittens had given us an assignment. We bring them some economic concepts and themes. they see if any of that might have promise for a real game. Okay, we took the assignment very seriously.

2:08We had a full staff meeting where we went deep, we went nerdy. And I believe you had told us to come back with about three ideas. We've got 17.

2:21Oh, this is going to be a fun project. Okay. Now, were all of these 17 ideas, like, obviously going to be monopoly killers? You know, displace America's most popular games? Well, who can say? And so we began to pitch. Think about this. There are elves. They live forever, but they have to plan for retirement. What do they do? What does that even mean? Okay. All right. Next idea. Apprentice wizards running a bank. So they have the power to create money, but they're apprentices, so it always backfires. They mess it up. Okay. You don't have to respond to everyone. You can let them settle in. I'm letting that one settle.

3:05Okay, they weren't all home runs, but some of her ideas did seem to be getting a decent response. Like when we pitched a game inspired by compound interest, the idea that a small investment can snowball into something massive with enough time. You ever play Risk? Yes. You've just described the mechanic by which armies are built in Risk, which is great. I mean, really, really nice shoulders to stand on there. So I would call that half of an idea. We also pitched a game called Moral Hazard, where you have to decide which failing banks to bail out. But you may be hurting your future self by teaching those banks that you're going to clean up their mistakes.

3:44What you just said, your future self. Like, there is an interesting game concept I've never seen before, where you have two players, you and your future self. We pitched a game called Keeping Up With The Joneses, where you buy things like a boat to make everyone around you jealous. Just to learn, oh no, having this boat card is costing me so much and making me miserable. Here's why I hate this idea. Let me start there. I think what you have just described is a game with no replay value. Once you understand the properties associated with each card, with each item, I don't think you're going to be able to find that same delight when you go through that game again.

4:27We pitched game idea after game idea. It's the same game, and you don't know if you're playing within the capitalist system or the socialist system. Oh, that's a fun twist. After game idea. I have a question, though, about the inflation game. Like, what's the goal here? Probably that, I don't know. We haven't thought that one through. Yeah. after Game Idea. Pro-cyclicality. We don't have to call the game that. Yeah, we're not going to call the game that. And what became very clear was that we knew very little about what might work for a new game. Do you think we brought something to the table here today that is useful?

5:02Absolutely, yes. I mean, look, there's two ways that games are born. One is you come up with a gameplay mechanic you absolutely love, and then you spend months and months and months trying to find the right theme that will sell properly. And the other way is you start off with a really strong theme, something that you know there's already an audience for, and then you try to find the right game planning mechanic to match with it. Feels like we've done neither here. You've planted the seeds for a path for the latter. Yes, and in fact, one of the 17 economic idea seeds that we planted that day would eventually become the Planet Money game.

5:42Hello and welcome to Planet Money. I'm Kenny Malone. And I'm Erica Barris. Planet Money is making a game. We have a partner. We've got some econ ideas. Now we need to figure out how to turn those ideas into a game. Today on the show, episode two in our game series, we get to go behind the scenes to see what it takes to make a game, ideally one that is fun and also chock full of economics, but doesn't feel like econ homework, which is perhaps a little harder than we appreciate it. By the end of this episode, you, listeners, will be able to play an early prototype of the Planet Money game. In fact, we need you to play it and help us perfect it.

6:20But first, the story of that game. Support for this podcast and the following message come from Ameriprise Financial. Chief Market Strategist Anthony Saglin-Bennie shares the importance of a goal-based investment strategy. You have to know where you're going, right? What's the goal? What's the destination? By identifying those goals, you can construct a well-diversified portfolio that hopefully helps meet those goals. For more information and important disclosures, visit Ameriprise.com slash advice. Ameriprise Financial cannot guarantee future financial results. Securities offered by Ameriprise Financial Services, LLC.

6:58Member FINRA and SIPC. This message comes from Apple Card. You left your wallet in the car. Or was it at home? No need to panic. With your iPhone, you can tap to pay using Apple Card with Apple Pay. And earn unlimited daily cash back when you do. Apple Card is ready when you need it. Subject to credit approval. Apple Card issued by Goldman Sachs Bank USA Salt Lake City Branch. Terms and more at applecard.com. This message comes from Grammarly. From emails to reports and project proposals, it's hard to meet the demands of today's competing priorities without some help. Grammarly is the essential AI communication assistant that boosts your productivity at work so you can get more of what you need done faster.

7:40Just a few clicks can tailor your tone and writing so you come across exactly as you intend. Get time back to focus on your high-impact work. Download Grammarly for free at grammarly.com slash podcast. That's grammarly.com slash podcast. We noticed that some of the most popular board games out there are about economics. Think Monopoly, Settlers of Catan. So we thought we should make a game. And along the way, learn about the economics of making a game. We want our Planet Money game to be nerdy, to teach people economics. And we want the game to be popular, beloved the world over, selling hundreds of thousands of copies.

8:20Millions even. Millions. Yeah. Yeah. And to sell all those games, the key is getting into stores like Walmart or Target. This is partly why we've partnered with Exploding Kittens. They know how to make games, the kinds of games that sometimes get picked up by big box stores. But, you know, let us not get ahead of ourselves. Step one here is, what even is the game going to be? Time for another meeting with Exploding Kittens. So last time we talked to you, you were the very lucky recipient of 17 incredible economic concepts that we gave to you. That, again, is Exploding Kittens co-founder, Alon Lee.

8:59But there are a bunch of Exploding Kittens folks on this call. It's been a few weeks, and we hadn't talked at all since our prolific pitch meeting. So we are curious just what happened immediately afterwards? What was the conversation that happened right after that? Oh, sure. So even when you pitched them to us, we were taking notes and we wrote down like, oh, maybe explore this, maybe explore that. And so that pretty quickly got us to like, all right, a lot of these are just not going to work. Like they're just, this feels like school. It's not going to be fun. What do we do? Yeah. However, Ilan and one of Exploding Kittens' game designers, Ian Clayman, tell us that one of our ideas in particular had sparked something special.

9:43So what was the idea that kind of fit? Yeah. So the one that we really got excited about was the Market for Lemons idea. Market for Lemons. Classic. The Market for Lemons is an economics paper from the 1970s by Nobel Prize winning economist George Akerlof. He's also famous because he's the husband of the former Fed head and secretary of the Treasury, Janet Yellen. In a nutshell, the Market for Lemons paper is about the market for used cars and the problems created from what's known as asymmetric information. In this case, there is unequal information between sellers and buyers of used cars. Right.

10:25A used car seller knows everything that is wrong with their used car, but the buyers do not. And that is a problem. But the reason it's a famous paper is because it shows how this ultimately becomes a problem for both the buyers and the sellers in the end. What happens is you'll have some dishonest sellers who hide what's wrong with their used cars. Eventually, buyers will assume all sellers are dishonest and all used cars are crappy cars. And so the buyers will only offer crappy car prices. Which then in turn means that the honest sellers who actually do have good cars won't bother trying to sell their cars at all.

11:01And so we end up with this like spiral where nothing's left in the market but lemons. Just bad, crappy used cars. The market for lemons is an example of how asymmetric information can destroy a market. It can literally lead to market failure. And it's not just a problem for used cars. Asymmetric information can be an issue in the health insurance market or when a company is trying to hire new employees. And exploding kittens like the idea. They liked the market for lemons. Is it just because the branding is so good? Like it is one of the best names of an actual economics paper ever. The name was compelling, but also the play pattern of two people trying to make a deal where one person has more information than the other is a pretty well-established gameplay pattern.

11:50Which could be good or could be, you know, rote at this point. I guess it could go either way. Well, understood, but I would say like not overused. Exploding Kittens had been playing around with some ideas inspired by Market for Lemons, and co-founder Elon Lee was very excited because they had discovered what they thought could be the core part of what could become the Planet Money game. In fact, Elon says, they were recording the exact moment that this discovery happened. No, it was really like just that is a very rare moment to catch on tape. And I kept like staring over at the camera thinking, oh, God, please still be recording.

12:29Please, please, please, please. Yeah. We really accidentally captured lightning in a bottle. 100 percent. Yes. Yeah. Go go look at the tapes. And so we present to you those tapes. All right. Go for it. OK, so we started off. We see exploding kittens in the dining room of a house they'd rented for a retreat. The dining table is covered in game designer accoutrement. Yeah, blank playing cards and Sharpie markers. Existing games that can be used for parts. There are four people around this table, including Elan, and they're playing around with some idea that's like, I don't know, what if there's one car seller and everyone else is a car buyer?

13:10Except there's no car per se. There's just four homemade cards that tell the seller whether they have a good car or a lemon. I mean, I did like the asymmetric information there of just like you and I were like, oh, it's a good car. And you guys were like, oh, it's a bad car. But it's just not working, they seem to agree. Interesting. Not fun yet. But interesting. They take a break to maybe let some new ideas percolate. Now, what's important to know about these recordings is that Exploding Kittens is not testing a game at all. Their cards don't have fancy art. They're not playing full rounds. What they are testing are different game mechanics, the most basic atomic level building block of a game.

13:53It's the loop that players will do over and over. And if the game mechanic is not sparking, there is no game. All right. What were you saying? Yes. So the thing that... The herd of exploding kittens reconvene, and this, we are told, is where the magical Planet Money game moment is caught on tape. We see co-founder Elon Lee is now pacing around the room, sort of conducting the team. Let's see if we had a deck with good cards and bad cards. Someone runs and grabs a deck of playing cards. Red card's bad, black card's good? Sure. Yeah, red card's bad, black card's good, like whatever. They're making this up as they go, and what they come up with is the following.

14:33So, okay, there's still a seller, and that person is going to start by drawing two cards and secretly looking at them. And they're going to see that those two cards are either both good or both bad, or one is good and one is bad. Those are the only three options. Then the seller proposes a deal to another player, the buyer. Like, I want to keep this card, and I want you to take this other card. Now, the buyer does not get to see those cards. They simply have to decide, do they accept this deal? or do they reverse it? Like, no, no, no, you take this card and I want your card. And to be clear, the seller doesn't have to offer one card.

15:13They could offer both cards or no cards. It's a little convoluted to explain. But it really is a surprisingly basic mechanic. Like deal or no deal, is the seller bluffing or not? Yeah, this isn't a fleshed out thing yet. This is trying to see if there's enough social manipulation here to be interesting. Yeah. And here is the moment Exploding Kittens was so excited to show us. It happens literally the first time they try this new game mechanic. Okay, so the first seller is in. He reaches for the playing cards, tries to remember the rules. So black is good, red, bad. That's bad. That's good. Two.

15:54He draws two cards. He looks at them, looks across the table at his buyer, looks back at his cards, looks at the buyer back to the cards. He sort of tilts his head and looks puzzled, almost as if to say, oh, wait, what is the strategy here? Alon is watching him, and he is delighted. Already interesting. Okay, what are you doing? Ian chooses to split up the two cards. He puts one card in front of himself, one in front of his buyer. Now it's the buyer's decision. Should he reverse the deal? No, he keeps it. They both flip over their cards. All right. Wow. Yes, some not radio-friendly words about how this all played out.

16:40Because it turns out both cards were bad cards. And Ilan is watching all of this fascinated because it has revealed that this mechanic is maybe more strategically complex than he thought. Ian had essentially chosen to eat one bad card in order to avoid the risk of ending up with two bad cards. You split those. Because you didn't want to take all the rest. Okay, I want to take all the rest. They run another round to test the mechanic again. We're switching cards. Oh, all right. And again. F*** it. And again. Keep it. Ah, f*** it. There's no way. Three times in a row. I mean, it is so basic. So basic, but also so clear that it has brought the room to life.

17:30Yeah, let's stop and have a little conversation. Yeah. All right. So something is happening here, which I like. Yep. But it's like a six out of ten. Right. And so that, Lon was explaining to us in our Zoom meeting, is what a game design breakthrough looks like for exploding kittens. It started to suddenly work and work really well. I noticed that you could sort of graph the intellectual curiosity, like, mm-hmm, I guess there's something interesting here. And then suddenly you're yelling more and saying the F word more to each other. I've never tried to plot that out on a graph, but I will bet there is a really nice correlation there you've just discovered.

18:10They were so excited. And we were excited that they were excited. But how to put this, we did not appreciate the simple elegance of the game mechanic. That's a nice way to put it. No, we were like, that's all like a bluffing game. And in our defense, here's what we were thinking at the time. We did know this was the earliest stage of development, but whatever this was needed to be the seed for the planet money game. Yeah. Shouldn't it literally teach people the big economic ideas behind the market for lemons? Like show players how asymmetric information can destroy a market. And what Exploding Kittens had showed us was like fun looking, but it did just look like deal or no deal, lying or not lying.

19:03Like that was the mechanic. And so we gently tried to offer this feedback. And then Ilan gently managed our existential crisis and reassured us that he has made a gazillion games. We want a game that an economist will pick up and say, oh, this is the greatest game. A high school class can play it, and it's almost like a substitute for reading the paper, Market for Lemons. But also, like, a 10-year-old can play it. That is the version we want. I love the challenge. I think we are certainly not there yet. I mean, is it going to be smart? Can we make it smart enough so that we can say, here's the economics concept.

19:43It's hidden there, but it's demonstrating this thing. I do, yeah. Well, here's the beauty of this. We got a really good game. It has a rough outline. of this economic principle. And now we need to figure out how you can walk away from the game with that delightful sense of nerdiness where you think like, oh, you fooled me into learning something, but I didn't even realize it at the time. And now that I do, that was really cool. Like if we can get there with this, we'll be in a good place. And it's better to start with a really fun game and try to get there rather than vice versa, which is a much harder task.

20:19Basically, Elan and the Exploding Kittens crew are like, trust us. We have an economic idea from you, and we have the beginning of a good game mechanic. And in this industry, a good game mechanic, it's rare. It's like discovering a new way to power a game. It is incredibly hard to come up with. And we have that. The rest will fall into place. And thus began a months-long process of so much prototyping. All right, friends, who wants to learn how to play the Planet Money board game? Draft one. Exploding Kittens would send a prototype, and in each draft, they're sending over more than just a game mechanic.

21:04They're sending handmade cards, usually just repurposed Exploding Kittens cards. And they're sending instructions. Your goal is to make deals with other players to collect the good cards and avoid the bad cards. The first player with five good cards wins. And for each of these drafts, Elon seems to also be making like a million tweaks, running tests, and apparently keeping audio journals this whole time. Okay, we just ran another test of the planet money game, and it was good, but not great. Okay, so the test last night was interesting. The mechanic is still pretty solid. Okay, just had a great test.

21:37I need to make some changes. Listening to Elan talk to, I guess, Elan in these recordings, did perhaps begin to give us more of an appreciation for the art of what he's doing. Yeah. Clearly turning a game mechanic into something that is a game comes with all these questions. Like, what is the optimal number of good cards versus bad cards? One, the deck was completely unbalanced. Would it be more fun if there were superpower cards that let you do special things? Didn't really work. Some were overpowered, some were underpowered. Okay, maybe tweak the superpowers. Make a whole new card. Wait, uh-oh.

22:16Are there still enough bad cards in the deck to cause chaos, though?

22:22Yeah, it is never-ending. There was the version where everyone was getting bored in between turns, so Elan tried giving everyone 16 cards in their hands, so they did have something to look at. So they're not bored. That's great. But there's just massive decision paralysis. Then there was a version where the game took no time at all to finish. Like, average gameplay was like four minutes, and ideally it would be closer to 20. So, meanwhile, whenever we would see one of these prototypes of the games, we were still a little worried, to be honest. Superpower cards, 16-card hands, fine. But like, when is this going to be a game where players live out the experience of being inside the market for lemons?

23:05We would go back to Exploding Kittens with this, like throwing spaghetti at the wall approach. Like, what if we introduced Monopoly money? What if people are constantly bidding or trading? What if the rulebook is 15 pages long? And Exploding Kittens was very patient with our flying spaghetti feedback. Sometimes they would make tweaks and sometimes they would have very valuable lessons for us on why our suggestions may not fit into the hyper-competitive, low-margin world of game manufacturing. So, for example, we asked them, would the game have more heft if it took a little longer to play, like more than 20 minutes?

23:42I would say the sweet spot for us in general is really to try to hit a 20-minute game, maybe 15 to 20 minutes. But if we can get maximum entertainment, satisfaction, that beautiful sense of mastery start to finish in 20 minutes, we know we have a hit on our hands. Okay. Why not go longer? That's our executive producer, Alex Goldmark. Why not go longer? Why is that the special amount? So you want players to be able to go longer. You don't want the game to force them to go longer. The story of Exploding Kittens is exactly this. We optimize that game to be exactly 20 minutes almost every time you play.

24:19Huh, okay. Another interesting business lesson came for us when we suggested that it was sort of hard during one of the prototypes to keep track of who was close to winning, who was close to losing. So how fun would it be if there were colorful plastic coins to keep track of all the points, eh? The Exploding Kittens team liked the idea, but Kelly Volpelak, VP of Creative Operations, told us, we are aiming for a planet money game made entirely of paper. So it's not a no on coins, but it's way better if they're not plastic. So paper is the cheapest. We love an all paper game because that means if we charge$20, we can make more money.

25:03Cardboard is paper? Yes. Okay. Cardstock, the box, we would even consider that paper. Okay. So, okay, Exploding Kittens tells us. They could add paper or cardstock or cardboard coins if that's what everyone wanted to do. But yes, mixing materials like having plastic coins would drive up manufacturing costs. It might require multiple factories. And to sell the game in a store like Target or Walmart, we want to keep the price to$20 to$25. So we have to keep costs down and keep it to paper if we want to make a profit. Anything you get from a tree, you can consider that paper. Okay. So off go the exploding kittens to make even more changes.

25:49And as we saw, prototype after prototype, it did start to dawn on us how terrible our idea had been to try and push our game towards a full-on simulation of a market for lemons. Because, you know, the beautiful lesson in that paper isn't just about the challenges when a seller has more information than a buyer. It's about how that asymmetry can cause a market to grind to a halt. So did we really want a game that ground to a halt in order to teach an economics lesson? I mean, honestly, kind of. But we were also beginning to see why that might not have a broadly popular appeal. So, okay. But even if the game wasn't going to recreate a Market for Lemons-style collapse, could the game mechanic at least get closer to nailing the feeling of real-world asymmetric information correctly?