3: John Rudolph Drexler – Game Design

Travis (00:00)
Hey, John, thanks for joining me today on Everything is Interesting. Why don't you give a quick little intro about yourself and then we'll dive into it.

John (00:08)
Hey, thanks for having me.

My name is John Drexler on Twitter. guess I'm John Rudolph Drexler. I always write my full name on the internet. I am a partner at Thunk. We're a small Laravel development agency. And my background is as a product manager before that. So a lot of what we focus on at Thunk is building things that require a lot of hands-on product development, project management stuff where we need to make

of hard decisions about how the thing actually works and talk through strategy and scoping things down to make them as small as possible, stuff like that. that's a lot of the clients we work with. And I also, guess we're going to talk about things that are outside of work. So that's all I'll say about Thonk. You should hire us. I'm done shilling. Okay, cool. Let's talk about other stuff now.

Travis (01:00)
Awesome. Well, okay. So we met last, this summer, month ago, I guess, I we've been acquaintances on Twitter and stuff for a while, but met at LairCon, which is for people who aren't in our little bubble, a software conference for the Laravel framework in Dallas a month ago. one thing that, so then we were talking recently and I mentioned my podcast and you're like, yeah, I've got things I'm super interested in.

but there is some crossover there kind of with professional world because at the conference you guys did this game and I don't want to do a bad job of describing it. tell us, I'll say this, you showed up with a gallon Ziploc bag full of dollar bills, $1,500 and $1 bills to this conference, which was quite the interesting visual, but what was that all about?

John (01:49)
That's correct.

Some people would call it a sort of desperate for attention. exactly. So yeah, basically, where do I start? How deep do you want to go into where this came from originally, or do you want to, for now, talk about just what that game was? I'll let you lead this a little bit.

Travis (01:58)
A stunt.

Go for it. No, all the way. Yeah. Where did this come from?

John (02:20)
Do you, okay, let me go back to, I'll go back to 2020. And I'll also say I'm thinking about this because I am, I'm writing a talk about this that I think I'm gonna give at a developer meetup soon. So I've been thinking a lot about this like ARC. But, so what happened was I designed games. There's a game behind me here, which I've.

Travis (02:24)
Okay.

Yeah.

John (02:48)
did a Kickstarter for called Colossi. That's a card game that, yes, definitely can. So I made games for a while. I started trying to make games around like 2016, got more serious about it in 2018 and developed games with my good friend Walter. And we had been making stuff for a while and we didn't know what we were doing. And so it's a lot like, I don't know, learning the software development where you're like, I guess we just start trying, know, well, let's just start like,

Travis (02:50)
which I want to get into also. we'll, yeah, yeah.

John (03:18)
pushing literally like, let's get index cards and write things on them and start pushing them around. We wanted to make a game about spaceships and we're like, make little spaceship cards and push them around. And then you immediately get into like, hmm, how many spaces can a spaceship move? And you're like, well, that implies that we have spaces. What are spaces? What do they represent? How big are they? Like we were like trying to figure out game design from first principles. Cause we were just like operating from nothing. It's just like, we wanted to make something cool.

Travis (03:43)
Yeah.

Right. Nice. OK.

John (03:48)
And our only real criteria was just like, needs to be something that we like playing and we have like pretty particular taste.

Travis (03:54)
How did you come to want to design a game in the first place yourself rather than just like, cause I'm, lots of people are super into playing games, board games, card games, whatever, but don't ever like make that leap to, I'm gonna make a game. So how did you get there? Does that come from like your sort of product design background? Like, I could do better than this kind of thing. Or what was that?

John (04:08)
Yeah.

Yeah, think it was, cause you know, it's around the same time that I actually got a job as a product manager, where I, cause I wanted to do product management for years and it's hard to get into. So, but both of those things kind of happened at the same time. So to me, they're like inextricably linked.

Like the way that I think about product management, the way that I think about product design is very connected to how I think about games. And then later on I became, later on in the story, I'll become a software developer. And the way that I think about software development is very linked to how I think about making games. It's very like systems thinking and there's a lot there, but they're very, very connected and they've always been connected for me.

And I think I just was playing a lot of games that I like. And there's a bunch of games on the shelf behind me. like, just, I lived in, I moved to Indonesia when I was in, like right out of college. My first job out of college was in Indonesia. and yeah.

Travis (05:15)
Okay, that's unusual. What was that about?

John (05:20)
I just got, it was a random job opportunity. basically had there, I would, I tried to get cool jobs in Chattanooga where I lived, Chattanooga, Tennessee, and nothing was working out. I didn't really have any idea what I wanted to do. I was like 22. I was fresh out of college and I was vaguely interested in like entrepreneurship and other stuff, but I didn't really know. And I got, I got turned down from a lot of jobs and then one.

Travis (05:32)
Okay. Yeah.

John (05:47)
I had an offer to go be a math teacher at the high school that I went to. It was like last minute they needed someone and I had a math minor and they were like, you could teach math to motivated seniors, right? And then through the college, there was this thing where...

Travis (05:54)
Okay, all right. Yeah. Okay.

John (06:06)
there was this organization, this very large conglomerate in Indonesia that did a bunch of different stuff from schools to hospitals to all sorts of different businesses. That's what a lot in Indonesia, there's a lot of these big family businesses that own like a little bit of everything. And the college was connected and sending over because it was connected to schools. were sending over teachers mostly to go to Indonesia. And I was like, man, going to Indonesia for like,

Travis (06:19)
Okay, great.

John (06:31)
And they like provide housing and they don't pay hardly anything but like they provide housing and you just get to go live in Indonesia and they pay for your visa and stuff like sounds pretty interesting, but I'm not a Yeah, and I was like it's and they were like, you know You're not really training to be a teacher, but you could go work at at the hospital and be like basically like a management associate just like kind of

Travis (06:38)
Yeah, what do you need when you're 22? Yeah, like, you have experience.

John (06:55)
random management things, mostly project management type stuff. But they like to bring in expats to rotate them through different management positions. Anyway, the first project they put me on was that they were going to build a clinic out in this rural area.

that had no healthcare at all. So this was out in West Papua, which is like, that island is like half Papua New Guinea and the other half is Western Papua, which is part of Indonesia. So it's on the Western half of the island. Like you fly out there and you're like, wow, I'm at the end of the world now. And then...

Travis (07:37)
Right.

John (07:39)
you get on a tiny, tiny little plane and you fly into the mountains and land on a grass landing strip in a place that has no electricity and no internet. Sorry, let me turn off my AC. just realized that that was noisy. And so you land. Yeah.

Travis (07:54)
There you go.

Yeah, it's like famously very rugged there, like hard to get anywhere. Yeah.

John (08:02)
It's like a place that like the village where I was living was like, there's no roads that lead to it. I mean, there's pathways so could hike around. We would walk to other villages, but like it's accessible only by plane. So anyway, and it's at these planes where you land on this grass landing strip and the landing strip is at like a sharp incline so you can slow down the plane really fast. So then when you take off, you just go down the giant ramp and then there's like a cliff at the bottom and you're like.

Travis (08:21)
huh.

You're off the cliff.

John (08:30)
Sure hope nothing goes wrong on the way to the tarmac out there. Yeah. Yeah, it was wild. So while I was out there, I was hanging out with these people. Like the thing that I was doing was not like a faith based thing, but the people who are out there who run those airplanes are all missionaries.

Travis (08:34)
my gosh. Okay.

Okay, right.

John (08:49)
And so I like lived with them because it was like these like Americans who were very kind and helpful and they're like really nice people to live with and they were the ones flying back and forth. And so I worked with them a lot as a project management. And there was like Germans and Americans and it's different. It was really, it very interesting situation out there. But those, those were the people who I would interact with in the evenings a lot because they spoke English and they were, they're like, we can't like stream Netflix out here.

you can like read books, you can hang out and you can play board games. And they had all the good board games. They would spend like, like all of the stuff that they would add, like out of the, you know, you have to be really economical about what you put in your bags coming back. They would use like all of their extra space on games. Cause they were like, this is like what we should do out here. And I learned exactly. Yeah.

Travis (09:23)
Thanks.

love it. The ROI is huge on that. Yeah, it's like you're going to get hours and hours and hours out of it. Yeah.

John (09:40)
Totally. And it's like completely analog, like power goes out. We don't care. Like we can still play games. And so that's what we did. We just played really great games with like smart, fun people. And I got really into them. And I don't know, I just something about them. That was a really circuitous way of saying, I was doing it I was just like, I think I could do this. That was basically it.

Travis (10:04)
I love it. love it. Yeah. what an interesting, cause lots of people are like, yeah, I've always been into games and stuff, but I love that. Like where that comes from. That's such a, I dunno, adds a lot of color. That's awesome. Cool.

John (10:18)
Yeah, so that's why I wanted to do it. So I guess fast forward back to 2018 or 2020. So at this point, guess, I'm making games, I'm doing stuff, COVID hits and it becomes extremely difficult to test things. again, much like software, you have to like...

The whole thing is testing. The whole thing is putting it in front of people and seeing how they react to it. And you could build a perfect piece of software that no one has ever touched and you're like, it's perfect, it's immaculate. And you're like, on first contact with a real human being with their dirty, grubby hands, it's going to not be so perfect. And so I have a very testing first mentality with games. I have opinions.

but everything, there's no opinion that's not tested.

the only opinions that make it into the final game are things that have been like thoroughly, thoroughly tested. And it doesn't mean that I sit down at a test and play with people where I'm like, I just like take everything they say, you know, at face value and implement it immediately. It's like, no, no, no. It's more like watching them seeing where they're confused, you know, playing myself where I'm like, this thing, I want to be able to do this thing, but I can't, why can't I do that? know? So COVID, it's like suddenly we're not able to

Travis (11:13)
Okay.

John (11:42)
test the games anymore.

I am at home binging Survivor as one does during COVID. And I was like, you know, it'd be really fun. Me and my friends sit on Discord and chat all day because that's where my buddies from college and Daniel and other people in my life, that's where we hang out. It'd be cool if we were playing Survivor via message.

Travis (12:15)
Okay, okay, all right.

John (12:17)
like over the course of like, what if instead of being like an hour long game, what if it was like a week long game, you know? And then like when we vote is like asynchronous. So like the drama of the social game unfolds over the course of a week. isn't that so interesting? Why do no games like that exist, you know? So we built it. And at this point, I'm not a programmer.

It was so fun. The game was kind of broken at first, but it was like really interesting. And we, and I built it all in a Google sheet. And I was like, I mean, I was pretty good with Google sheets at that point. Cause like, I was like,

like minimally I was like a little bit technical but like was like needing to do stuff like that at work all the time and so I I built this like complex web of sheets and then got to the point where I was like we need like scripts in here and eventually like the game became complex enough that Daniel Colborne who is now my business partner who is a really good Laravel developer who's like out there speaking at conferences and building great open source and all this stuff he's like

I go to him and I'm like, hey man, I need you to help me write some better Google scripts for my spreadsheets. And he was like, I like, no, there's not enough money in the world to make me, you have a budget of zero, but even if you had a budget of 10 million, I wouldn't do that. He's like, you need to become a web developer because this is a web game.

Travis (13:40)
Right, do it this way.

Right. I mean, awfully impressive that you managed to get that far doing it in Google Sheets. Like that's pretty like, that's good. You know? Yeah.

John (13:57)
Yeah, exactly. That is pretty funny. mean, and there were limitations. We had to have a guy or a gal every game be, know, Jeff Probst is the host of Survivor. We would have a person be...

Travis (14:16)
Okay.

Yeah. So there's like a little different flavor each time.

John (14:45)
Yeah, yeah. And then we found like one of our friends was like really, really good at being probed and hated playing the game. And we were like, okay, great. Like, why don't you just like, and then he was like, he's like, well, I'm not a game designer, but, and then he designed like all of these like beautiful, amazing things in the game. And we're like, wow, Chris, you're so good at this. So that was really cool.

Travis (14:52)
Hmm. Yeah.

John (15:07)
So all that to say, we get to this point, Jacob Davis, who also works with us at Thunk, also, he's one of my oldest friends. We've been friends since we were like 12 or 13. And he and I are, he was also roommates with Daniel in college. And he and I were like, we're interested in becoming Laravel developers, but how do we even do that? And Daniel basically said, well, why don't you,

Why don't, like, how about I give you a task every week and you try it. And on Sunday night, I'll do an hour of code review. But like, you're not allowed to reach out to me until Sunday night. Which is, yes, exactly. And of course, Sunday night would inevitably end up being like five hours, because we enjoy hanging out. But.

Travis (15:51)
Yeah, like kept his scope from growing too much.

Yeah, right. Yeah, yeah.

John (16:03)
It was actually I mean in retrospect. I think there's there's almost no better way to learn programming It's like every week you have a really specific task and the task is a little bit I remember every week I'd feel like I Don't know how to do that. Like I don't I really don't know how to and Daniel's like we'll just take a crack at it You know, like even if you take a crack at it and it doesn't work whatever and oftentimes what would end up happening is I would get it functional

Travis (16:18)
Yeah.

John (16:32)
but in a completely insane way.

And then he'd come back and be like, nice, you got it working. I'm going to delete all of this code and explain to you why, you know? But it was really cool and it ended up being like this really amazing experience. And it took us forever to build it because it's like two people who are beginner programmers writing all the code. So through that whole experience though, we got, I mean, at the end of this game, I think I put in about 1200 hours.

Travis (16:53)
Sure, yeah.

Yeah, nice. Wow.

John (17:04)
That includes all of the game design, all of the building of it, all the testing, all the retros after, how do we make this thing better? How do we make this better? All in all, I think I put in about 1200 hours, which is something that an insane person would do. at this point, Daniel, part of the way through, Daniel's like...

Travis (17:19)
Right, totally.

John (17:28)
I realize I want to make my own. We used event sourcing to build it. we use Spotsy's event sourcing package and Daniel was like, I now have like really clear opinions about how I want my event sourcing package to work. So verbs was kind of born out of that whole experience. I became a programmer. Jacob became a programmer. Daniel had so much inbound stuff coming in from freelancing. cause he's, he's a really great freelancer for a long time that he was like, you know, I'm turning down good work.

but like if we had an agency I wouldn't have to. So like Jacob and I start Moonlighting and then we start Thunk and like all of this amazing stuff came out of it and then at the conference, the conference is coming around and we're like we do not have a big budget. We're a tiny little company but we really need everyone at

the age at the conference to walk away knowing our name and to have some positive association with us. And like, if we try to like make, you know, 1500 beer koozies or whatever, it's like, it's just not, it's not gonna work. It's not gonna, the math isn't gonna add up here. And so we were like, why don't we just lean into the thing that we know how to do, which is like,

we had learned so much about what kinds of things work in an asynchronous social game that's not just an hour long. And it was, as soon as we had the idea, I think I wrote up the scope for the Lericon game in like essentially an hour, because it was just like, it was like, I know exactly what we can and can't do in a two day game that people have to learn really, really fast.

Travis (19:03)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah, right.

John (19:21)
and it worked really well and we built it in verbs which meant it was so much easier to build and then of course it tied in with Daniel's talk and yeah.

Travis (19:32)
Right, yeah. That was the coolest, like the talk where he showed replaying everything. I loved that. That was really neat.

John (19:38)
Yeah, yeah. We had had long conversations about it beforehand. were like, you know, are we gonna, like we really wanted to have some kind of fireworks from his talk, you know, some kind of like, and I had suggested early on, like, what if it tied into the game? And we kind of shied away from it for a while. We're like, it's just too risky. It feels so crazy. And then Chris Morell.

Travis (19:51)
Yeah.

Yeah. Like what if it totally crashes and burns and yeah, it doesn't.

John (20:05)
Yeah, it's like, because it's like, we want to take this big swing and like, if everything goes perfectly, it's going to be great. But it's also like, that could have been humiliating, you know, like, it could have been like, okay, Daniel's first big like, Larricon US talk, I'm out there with a bag full of money. I'm like, I'm a game designer. Isn't that awesome? And like, everything crashes and burns like it could have been

Travis (20:26)
Yeah, just standing on stage like, well, it doesn't work.

John (20:29)
Yeah, yeah, well, I guess we're idiots and you shouldn't hire us. you know, it was I was I was extremely anxious for that entire conference. So I was thrilled when everything went went great. And anyway, so it was a it was a super cool experience and it was really fun to tie in like something from outside of work into into.

Travis (20:38)
Yeah, I can't imagine.

John (20:54)
end of real life. That was like a 40 minute version of that story. I'm sorry.

Travis (20:57)
I love it. No, that's great. No, no, no, no, no. Like, that's so cool that you got like there's a thread connected from, you know, this like one of the most remote places in the world back to Laricon. Like, that's perfect. You know, I love that. OK, so you're so you're into to game design. And so you've done you know, you've done that. But you also somewhat recently designed your first, I'm not sure, like physical game as well or or

John (21:11)
Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah, that's where we actually started was making these physical games. My friend Walter and I, he's a product designer and he was at Dropbox at the time. So we had worked together and we had been making this board game, which we actually just recently picked back up. That was what we like, we spent like two years on.

Travis (21:28)
Tell me, yeah, go there.

John (21:52)
real year, like we every single Saturday, we got together and spent the whole Saturday working on it kind of thing. But that's what it's similar to with Peking Order. It's like Peking Order was the game that we made that we that didn't work out that I put 1200 hours into where it's like it took forever, partly because it was the first thing the first it was like where I learned how to write code. Similarly, it took we spent two years on this board game, partly because we didn't know how to make a game.

Travis (21:57)
Wow, that's some commitment.

Yeah, you had to learn everything by yourself.

John (22:21)
Yeah, exactly. And we were making these silly mistakes. One time we were like, we've identified all the problems with this game. Let's redesign it from scratch and accidentally designed a completely different game. And we're like, shit, we really want to go back and have the magic we had before and we lost it. So we were just tripping over our own feet.

Travis (22:47)
Sure.

John (22:50)
Recently, we set it down in 2020 and recently we started testing it again and started adding a bunch of stuff into it. like, this is actually, we're like, we're good enough now that we know how to finish this. So that's really exciting. But I started working on Colossi also in 2020. And it is a card game. It started as like advice that people give a lot of new game designers is to make

52 card game. And the reason you could do that, I mean, that could be good too, even it doesn't have to be exactly 52 cards, but basically make a game that fits into one deck of cards. And part of that is that if they decide to manufacture it, you can get a deck of know, of custom cards printed pretty easy, pretty cheap. Cards are really cheap to print.

Travis (23:22)
Like a game using a deck of like a normal.

Yeah, okay.

Yeah.

John (23:49)
But the other part of it is that it's a really helpful design constraint because a lot of new designers will just like, it's just that classic thing of like when the world is wide open to you, it's actually paralyzing, it's not helpful. And so to say like, okay, come up with an idea.

Travis (24:02)
Totally.

John (24:08)
that you could fit into a deck of cards? Or if you already have an idea, you want to do this fantasy RPG thing that's way too big and you don't have the skills to build it yet, what if could you figure out how to pair it down into a deck of cards? What would come out of that? It's a really interesting exercise that's really helpful. So that's where I started with Colossi, was I had this idea.

for a game that I had been really interested in actually since like 2016 and

I was like, I think this is a card game and I think I could make it a deck of cards. It turned out to like blossom a little bit past that where there's like, there's big cards and little cards and it's not, you know, it's not 52 cards. There's, I don't know, 150 cards in the game or something. So it's, you know, it's a little bit, it blossomed out of that, but it started there.

Travis (24:52)
Okay.

John (25:07)
And in 2020, when I was home alone, guess I was working on pecking order and colossi kind of in parallel. I usually like to have a digital project and a physical project going at once. And I had to make a decision about whether to... The thing that I guess is like, this is a lot of parallels to software too and in product management as well is like...

The biggest thing I'm learning right now is that distribution is the hard part in a lot of ways. And the...

Travis (25:38)
Hmm.

John (25:45)
I guess.

Designing a game that I like, it takes a long time and it's like intellectually difficult and like creatively difficult. There were like, you know, mountains to climb there, but it's like, I could do that. I could probably design 10 games that I like in my lifetime, right? It will take, it'll take a long time, but I know I can do it. I just have to sit down and do it and test it and test it and test it.

Travis (25:57)
Sure.

Right.

John (26:15)
and getting the art done and getting the manufacturing done. it's all, it's a bit like those parts are like, it's clearly I could crank through that 10 times, but like really finishing something, especially when like you print text on cards that can't be wrong. Really, really finishing something, putting all of the final touches on absolutely everything, running in this case, a Kickstarter.

dealing with the manufacturer, dealing with shipping, setting up the company, insuring the shipment, finding warehousing, shipping out hundreds of copies around the US, and then now this new situation that I have, which is that I've broken even, I think I've sold 400 copies of the game, but the minimum purchase size when you really get it manufactured is 1,500.

Travis (27:07)
Yeah.

John (27:09)
Now it's like, financially it's fine. I feel very creatively fulfilled. I'm in a good place, but I'm like, I got to sell 1,100 copies of a game. And like, that's a tremendous amount of work. It's a lot of like...

Travis (27:20)
Yeah, it's like all the non game stuff that really, yeah.

John (27:24)
Yeah, and like, so I'm thinking about like, I don't know, leading up to building Colossi, I had made a bunch of games and I still now have like a bunch of like little prototypes that I'm like, this is cool, this is cool. Some of them are websites, some of them are physical. But now I'm like, you gotta be real picky about which one you go finish because like that...

Travis (27:49)
What are you gonna take? Yeah, yeah.

John (27:51)
Yeah, and also the moment, even the social capital too, of me coming up to, me going on the internet and saying, hey everybody, you should really seriously give me $30 for this. It's good, it's that good. And like, I'm not gonna say that about a new project every year. I'm probably not even gonna say that about a new project every other year. So it's like, I need people to trust me that like, if I come up to you and say, you gotta give me $30 for this, it's like really good. So.

Travis (28:01)
huh.

Yeah.

Hmm.

John (28:19)
It's interesting because I'm like, I think at the end of the day, I'm going to have like 20 times more prototypes than I am going to have games on the shelf.

Travis (28:28)
And is that, I mean, is that because you, like just your personality, cause you're really, really picky or is that just, like, this is maybe hard, you know, this is some introspection, but like, are you too picky about how, you know, what, what you, where the bar is?

John (28:49)
I don't think so. I think part of it is it's interesting because it's partly well partly just because I'm like I I don't know I there's there's two

Travis (28:53)
Okay.

John (29:09)
This is gonna sound this is gonna sound pretentious because I don't really think of myself as an artist But there's there's like two types of artists that I love with like in music. I always like think about this where I'm like Frank Ocean is phenomenal amazing and He puts like ten years into an album and makes it perfect and then like

Travis (29:33)
Okay, right, yeah.

John (29:37)
almost releases something and almost releases something and it is like, no, it needs to be just right. It needs to be just so, you know, and there's other artists who are just like spraying stuff out there. And I actually, don't dislike that. I think sometimes it's really cool. Like there's an artist like Toro Imua, who I really love, Chad Bundick is his name. And like he, he's just putting out like two albums a year. They're all like creative and interesting.

Some of them are like really not my thing, but I'm like, man, this guy is just cooking. like, they don't have the same weight to me as a Frank Ocean album, but I like appreciate it for different reasons. I feel like I make stuff like the latter, but I need to release stuff like Frank Ocean, where I'm like...

Travis (30:12)
Yeah, just prolific.

You

Okay. Yeah.

John (30:49)
might crash but it's awesome. And like I've got like a bunch of those up my sleeve and I'm excited about them and I love testing them and they're so fun. But the moment of like okay I'm gonna go put hundreds of hours into distributing this and I'm gonna ask for your money. I'm like that has to be a very high level you know that has to be like the high the best thing that I can put out and I need to be like kind of exacting about the the quality.

Travis (31:17)
That resonates. like that. That reminds me of the, I don't know if you've ever heard of the, I think this is either an apocryphal story or maybe there was some actual study or thing done where they took two groups of people and they were gonna like learn how to do pottery. And so the first group they said, it was like a class, know, like a semester long class. And the first group they said, okay, you're only gonna be scored on your like your last thing that you make at the end of the semester, like one perfect pot, like.

That's your grade. Your whole grade is this one perfect pot. And the other group, said something like, okay, you're going to, your grade is just depends on the total weight of all the pots you make over the course of the semester. So like the more pots you make, the better your grade. And at the end, it was like the people who made just tried to make as much as they could. Like they were way better, know, like vastly better. Yeah. But it's that difference. Like you're talking about like, okay, do that. And then

John (32:02)
Yeah.

Yeah, I totally believe that. Totally believe that.

Travis (32:14)
ship the thing at the end. Actually, sell that thing, not all the stuff in between.

John (32:16)
Yes.

Yeah, and like, I mean, this morning I was like, I have this little idea for a game about writing and like this, there's a teacher, one of my high school English teachers who I have a great relationship with, he was like, I'd be like down to like...

try that with my students. So I was like waking up early this morning, just like grinding on this thing, you know, that I'm like, I'm building with like Laravel and I'm using as an excuse to like do a big flux thing. I'm like building everything with, I'm like using all these flux components I don't even need. Cause I'm like, this is a good excuse, but I'm just like, this game has like no commercial potential, you know, it's like.

Travis (32:38)
cool.

Nice.

Yeah, it's just fun.

huh, right.

John (33:02)
There's so little probability that it will have like, it could like be like viral or commercially successful or whatever, but I'm like, it's interesting to me. I just like making stuff and I'm gonna do, yeah, so.

Travis (33:15)
Yeah, it still has value, not just to you, but then like you can share it with this, like this teacher and his students or like it can go, it can go be in the world and have impact and value to people, even if it's not a commercial, you know, like, you're to make a

John (33:20)
Yes.

Yes.

Totally. So that's what I love that image of just just crank out pottery, you know, and I have hope that like, I'm just in my happy place doing that. And so like, if, if I, on my deathbed, I'm like, you know, you sold a thousand copies of Colossi, you made one other thing and like, that was it. I'd be like, eh, it's like,

Maybe like a little bit disappointing, but also like I just had such a great time doing it that I don't really care at all. But I do have like a little bit of that hope of like, if I am just like cranking out pottery, you know, for 10, 20 years, like it'd be really cool if like one thing broke through, you know.

Travis (34:18)
Yeah, just every now and then you have like, this is the one. This is one. This one's deserving of the extra polish and like, let's give this to people. Yeah. That that there's this phrase I have bouncing around in my head. Actually, I'll give credit to my wife here. She she's told me because I've I rant about stuff and she's like, you should write an essay about that. Sounds like she's like, sounds like you need to write an essay titled The Process is the Point. And I'm like, that's the you know, it's like the process is the point. That's what you're doing. Yeah. But.

John (34:24)
Yeah, yeah, yeah, totally.

Yeah. Yeah. Totally.

Travis (34:46)
But also, if you get some nice gems out of it, even better.

John (34:51)
Yeah, I think that's right. like, it's also, I don't know. I mean, it sounds like this is a little bit of what you're getting at, but it's like, feel like that's also very connected to like my happiness or my state of mind that if my happiness hinges on a commercially successful game that's like perfectly well received and blah, blah, blah, it's like...

Travis (35:06)
Yeah.

John (35:19)
My happiness is hinging on a huge number of factors that I have no control over. And that's a precarious position to be in. Yeah, it could work out. Yeah, but it's also interesting. You know, hear like...

Travis (35:31)
Yeah, it might work out. Like, maybe. Maybe.

John (35:39)
movie stars talk about this all the time. I've heard so many people say this, but Jim Carrey said it too. It's just like you make your hit movie, you get your Oscar, and three minutes later you're like, shoot, now I have to do it again. The happiness is gone because you're just like, have to achieve again. I have to do this again. I don't know. I think if that's what your goal is, is the achievement, the moment where you're standing in front of a crowd of

and they're cheering you on. It's like, if you're lucky, you're gonna get like 10 minutes of that in your whole life. And if your enjoyment is like, I can't wait to get up early tomorrow.

to grind not on a side hustle that makes money, but to grind on this like stupid game that I'm making for like one high school class. But it's like, I just love it so much that it's like, yeah, I have to. And like, hope to be doing that when I'm 60, you know. Then it's like, well gosh, I could be happy every day for like years on end. Yeah, yeah.

Travis (36:37)
Yeah. Like I can't help it. have to do it. Yeah.

Yeah, yeah.

How could you not be? It's all with it. It's all right there. Yeah. Yeah. You know, the comic strip Calvin and Hobbes, there's a great one where Calvin says to Hobbes, he's like, hey, if you could have anything in the world, anything you want right now, what would it be? And Hobbes thinks for a minute and he says a sandwich. And Calvin's like, you know, what? Are you kidding me? That's crazy. You could have anything. You have you know, jets or a castle or man. You're like, whatever, you know, whatever kid thinks is awesome.

John (36:58)
Yeah.

Mm.

Yeah.

Travis (37:20)
And then the last panel, it cuts to him like in the kitchen and Hobbs is eating a sandwich he just made. And he's like, I got what I wanted.

John (37:26)
Yeah, yeah, he's content. Dude, and Hobbes is so good. Our family is very split. At our breakfast table, we had a big pile of Calvin and Hobbes and we had a big pile of Farside. And we have Calvin and Hobbes people and we have Farside people. And I'm more of a Farside person, but I really love both.

Travis (37:31)
Yeah.

Nah, yeah.

Yeah, there's some good philosophy in both of those.

John (37:53)
Yes, exactly. Man, making me nostalgic. I want to go get some. Maybe I have some room on my bookshelf for some of those.

Travis (38:01)
I know, yeah, get some Kalamazes up there, yeah. Okay, so quick question. When you made Colossi, not really asking, did that make you happy? was that like a, because am I right that that was the first sort of commercial physical game that you produced and distributed? Okay. Yeah, okay, right. So did that like...

John (38:22)
First thing I ever put a barcode on. Yeah.

Travis (38:28)
flip a switch for you or what was that like was there any kind of shift or mental like like I want to do this again despite all the I mean I'm hearing totally hearing on you you know all the difficulties in the tedium of all the admin stuff of actually selling a game but what was that like

John (38:38)
Yeah.

Yeah, and I don't mean to complain, like, you know, I've enjoyed it too. I mean, I think I've treated it all, I don't know, much like when I first said, like, I want to make a game. I made a decision early on, I guess that was like, I want to make a game company, you know, I want to make a game publisher. Because one thing you can, there's a couple paths. And one of them is like, you can just make games and sell them to publishers.

Travis (38:57)
Mm-hmm.

Okay, alright, okay.

Mm-hmm.

John (39:16)
And I actually met someone, nice guy, who I've become friends with up here in New York who does that professionally. And he just like, he just cranks out game prototypes. And he's like thinking about commercial viability because he has to sell them to publishers. So he's like, here's, I went to a game testing event with him and he had like 15 prototypes with him.

Travis (39:29)
Okay.

John (39:41)
And they're all like really ugly because like he's like I don't do art. I'm not responsible for that part of it, you know And it's great. I love the ugly of the prototype the better, you know, the better the experience and he was like

Travis (39:51)
Yeah, because then it's not about visual. It's about the actual mechanics of the gameplay. Yeah. Right.

John (39:54)
Yeah, he's just like, does this game work? You know? Yeah. And he's like, this is a game about dust bunnies. And like, I think it's like, you know, it's like kid friendly, but there's like, there's just enough strategic stuff that, you know, like, you know, fifth grader could play it and totally get it. And it's like, okay, cool. We played it it was really fun. He was great. But he's just, he just does that where he's just like, I just want to make little things that work that are like,

cute and commercially interesting and then I can sell it and if you know when the game comes out you get like a dollar a copy because you don't own it you don't have final creative control over it you don't you know they could totally change the theme they could shelve it and if they put it out and you make a dollar a copy and so if it's a runaway hit you can you can make some money

Travis (40:26)
Mm-hmm.

Do you get any kind of like an advance or anything? Do they give you some upfront, like, you know?

John (40:45)
I think so. I'm going to ask him more about that. But it's interesting. So he has this real detachment.

Travis (40:47)
Yeah.

John (40:50)
And he's like, he's like, I just want to hit, you know, like he's like, can make like a little bit of money. He's not making much money. he's, but like, if he has a hit, he could make good money and also just have more clout. You know, he has like, but as a result, he's got like a bunch of games that are like on shelves, some places, none of them are very big, but like, he's like, he gets, but then he gets opportunities to work on like existing IP and stuff like that. That it's like, they're, they, they come to him. They're like, Hey, we want to make a so-and-so game, you know? And he's like,

I could do that for you. So that's a path. it's, I've always not, I've almost said always not, I've never wanted it. A simpler way to say always not is never. That I just, something about it, I was just like, I wanted to have control, I think. But then also I wanted to have the experience of like,

having a game publisher where I was like, how do you do all the parts of this? know, like, how do you, how do you sort out like the manufacturing and the art and all the, all these things that I just talked through, it's like, I was like curious, like, I think I'm going to learn a lot by just trying all of them. And at the end of it, it's like, I have this game that's like,

Travis (42:05)
Mm hmm. Yeah.

John (42:12)
really mine and I keep 100 % of the profit and that's pretty cool. It also means that no one in the world is advocating to sell these games except for me, which is kind of a problem because I'm pretty busy. So it's a problem that I'm now working through, but it has made me think.

Travis (42:25)
Yeah, right.

Yeah.

John (42:38)
Like this, to get specific, it's like the game, the board game that I just started revisiting with Walter. I'm like, this game rocks. I love it. I like it even more than Colossi. It's like, it's a game that I love playing. Like if you asked me to play, I've tested it a ton. If you asked me to play it right now, I'm like, I want to play this game because it's like one of my favorite games, you know? But I'm just like...

You know, it's a bigger game. It's going to be more expensive than Colossi because there's more components in there. And I'm like, I'm sitting on an 1100 copies of Colossi. Am I really going to go out and, you know, it's like, am I going to go through this whole process for another thing where at the end of it, it could be by the time I run a Kickstarter for that, I've mowed through half these copies of Colossi, in which case I'm like, hey, I got a business on my hands. You know, it could also be that I run the Kickstarter for this new thing and I still have a thousand copies of Colossi.

Travis (43:04)
Thank you.

Yeah, right, yeah.

You

John (43:32)
And then I'm like, well, now I have like thousand copies of Colossi and a thousand copies of this other game. And I'm like, I just feel like a schmuck, you know? So I don't know. That's like, that's what I'm currently thinking through. That's like a little bit tricky because I'm like, I think I could figure out the distribution part of it, but do I want to, you know? Like, is that even a problem? Yeah. It's like, or do I just want to make a ton of games? So I, that's a part.

Travis (43:48)
Mm-hmm. Yeah, like is that what you want that part of your life to be? Yeah.

John (44:00)
That's the part that I'm currently wrestling with.

Travis (44:03)
Yeah, I mean, it sounds to me, you you said earlier when you gave the example of Frank Ocean and I don't remember the other artist, you know, you mentioned you, but you you're like, I'm not trying to say I'm an artist, but here's an example. And I'm in my head and even more so now I'm like, yeah, but you're an artist. Like, that's what you're doing. You know, like you are making art. And sounds like that other that other path is is like totally justifiably and totally legit.

John (44:21)
Yeah. Yeah.

Travis (44:32)
but not really making art. It's a different thing.

John (44:35)
Yeah, and and it's cool because like it gives you this It gives you this unbelievable level of control and it and to keep the profits so it's like if you could put the pieces together and sell Even a few thousand games. It's like You know, you're not I'm not gonna quit my job. I don't want to like but

Travis (44:45)
Right.

John (45:04)
it actually could, you know, if I could, if I could sell 5,000 copies of colossi, like that would be a meaningful amount of money to me, you know? so like it's interesting because it's like, it is the business of it is kind of interesting and I feel like I could do it. It's just like, there's only so many hours in the day and it's like, do I want to put those hours towards like trying to get this game onto shelves in, you know,

Travis (45:20)
Mm-hmm.

John (45:33)
like Massapiqua or do I want to make more games? Yeah. Yeah.

Travis (45:37)
Do want to make games? Yeah. Do you want to make art? Yeah. Yeah. It's like that, that the process is the point. Like which process is the point for you? Yeah.

John (45:46)
Yeah, right Yeah, and like deciding which problems to solve that's what like my whole my whole thing is about is just like there's a lot of problems you could solve and A lot of them are not that crazy hard But they take time they take they take They take some some elbow grease, you know, there's a really there's a great old clip of Steve Jobs where

Travis (46:04)
Yeah. Right.

John (46:15)
Someone was talking about like business and like people who go to get their MBAs and like the difficulty of business. And he's like, business is easy. He's like, I don't know. Like, I don't know who tricked you into thinking that business is hard. He's like, it's, you know, you have to try hard. You have to put time in, but it's not like intellectually difficult to like run a business, you know.

Travis (46:33)
Right. You're not like discovery trying to figure out new things. It's like, it's a well, it's a well-trod path. yes.

John (46:37)
Yeah. Yeah, yeah. In the same way, it's like, if I wanted to put 40 hours a week into selling these games, I bet I could figure it out. It's just like, I currently don't have those hours and I don't know if I want to.

Travis (46:57)
Yeah, that makes sense. Interesting, What about, OK, so you've talked about this other game that you've recently revisited. do you think you'll make and distribute and sell that game? Or is that still like you think that will happen?

John (47:15)
I think so. I just love it so much. I just love the game. I love the game so intensely and it's mostly done. I mean, well, I shouldn't say that. There's a lot more to do. We just introduced a lot of complexity, not for the player necessarily. For the player, there's like a comparable amount of complexity, but we added in things.

Travis (47:27)
we knew.

John (47:43)
We added the problem with games is that every time you introduce a new concept, it has the potential to collide with every other concept in the game. And there are so many permutations that it's a very difficult thing to model out in your head. And it's a difficult thing to predict. And.

as a result, that's basically why I rely so intensely on testing. So we just introduced, yeah, yeah, it's just like, you need someone, you need a group of four people to sit down and play it and then try something and then be like, these two things are incoherent together or...

I'm gonna use this like this. And I never expected they would use it like that. And they like break the game and score a hundred points or whatever. And you go like, interesting. I hadn't, games are just like, there are these deceptively complex systems that are quite fragile actually.

Travis (48:51)
That's okay. So that makes me think about, I mean, essentially then a game is there's some, it's a logic system, right? You have like state and actions and you can do all this stuff. I mean, there's, there seems like that's just screaming for there's overlap there with software and how you test software and like manually testing software versus, you know, writing automated tests for stuff. Is that a thing that people do when they're designing physical games is to like represent that?

John (49:07)
Totally.

Yeah.

Travis (49:20)
in software and then test it that way, like to test like, like exactly like you're saying, like, you have all these permutations and there's so many. then like, could you test them in an automated fashion?

John (49:25)
It's.

It's a really interesting question and I don't know. I mean, it's also really funny because I remember telling Daniel like five years ago that I was running into this problem.

And Daniel in his brain, he's like, you need to do test-driven development. You need to write tests. And I was like, I can't write tests. It's a board game. And it's interesting because I know, obviously, in the world of video games, for sure, because that is software. And then there's also some really cool automated testing, even about like,

Travis (49:46)
Yeah, right. Right.

Yeah, exactly.

Of course.

John (50:04)
walk around this 3D environment in a chaotic way to make sure you don't break through walls and fall off the map kind of stuff. Like there's all of that. But that's a really interesting question. I've never heard of anyone doing that for a board game.

Travis (50:09)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Yeah, that's interesting. Because I know there's also like, it's a thing, you know, that people will port board games to like be playable on desktop. You know, I think isn't it, I think there's a whole like app you can buy that then has all these, know, you can buy all the games that are forward or whatever, like there's a whole engine for that, right? So that makes me wonder, which that is like, so you can have a visual representation, but you wouldn't even need that for testing. Like you would just need the logic.

John (50:27)
Totally.

Yeah, totally.

Right. Literally just like, Well, and like, I already now build so many games in, you know, as Laravel apps, you know, that are event sourced that I'm like, I could do it. It's an interesting, so one thing that this gets into now, now we're in the realm of like programming and games, which I think is also very interesting. Cause I also like, I've...

Travis (50:53)
Yeah.

Yeah, it's fun, pretty.

John (51:08)
I've never programmed a video game. don't know anything about that. But like the thing that got me to programming was designing a backend architecture for games and which is like in some ways it's like it's a

Travis (51:15)
Right. Yeah.

John (51:22)
I told Daniel the other day, Daniel was like, I only have fun programming when I'm programming like novel new problems. And I was like, you should just program games because that's all novel problems. the, you start designing a game and you go like, I can imagine how I would build this as a Laravel app. And you get like four steps into it. And you go like, you know, this is not like any SaaS app I've ever built for a client. This is just totally different. You know, the rules are all, the rules are

Travis (51:32)
We have.

John (51:52)
different and it all just works very differently.

Travis (51:53)
you have like all these different interactions that you wouldn't have in like a normal business app kind of thing. And yeah, yeah.

John (51:59)
Yeah, totally. And one of the, it gets really interesting and it gets really gnarly. like now I have like, it's funny. I don't have a digital game out on the market that you can pay me 9.99 for, but I have spent thousands of hours building games at Laravel. Just kind of funny. So hopefully one day, but.

Travis (52:23)
Yeah.

John (52:29)
Yeah, the programming and game thing, I think there's like a, there's a conference talk in here somewhere too. which is that like the thing that I keep on thinking about, which is, this is like a, a very half-baked thought, but, I haven't really figured out how to articulate it, but it's like, cause I think other people have articulated this well about non game things, but like complexity in code.

Travis (52:34)
There's got to be.

John (52:58)
like reveals itself to the user in some ways. That it's like, if you failed to model the problem well in the backend architecture or in the front end, like the user's gonna smell that somewhere because like it's gonna, it's going to have consequences for the user experience. It's gonna get weird. And in the same way, like in the UI, it's like, if you wanna do something in the UI where like,

Travis (53:03)
Okay, right.

John (53:27)
you start modeling out like, okay, here's how this new feature is gonna work. I used to run into this as a product manager when you're being lazy on design. And somebody pokes a hole in it and goes, wait, but how does this feature actually really work? And you go, well, let's put help text over here to tell them this. And when we get into this one funky state and we have to make this really important button disappear, we'll put help text over here to explain why this really important button disappeared. It's like, no, no, no, no, no.

when you have introduced a bunch of like disappearing buttons, weird state help text, that is like the smoke is rising from the basement. Like we know that we have a problem. Like yeah, like something has gone, like we have not carefully considered this design yet, you know? And I used to run into that all the time. So I think in the same way,

Travis (54:05)
Yeah, this is dad, dad, dad. Yeah. Go back. Yeah, right.

John (54:18)
We started running into this thing once I started really wrapping my head around like the architecture, the event source architecture that we chose for Peking order, people in Peking order, like other people who are helping us design the game and like weigh in on stuff who are not programmers would be like, what if we did X, Y, Z? And in my head, I would immediately understand that as like,

X, Y, and Z actually like threaten some of the like fundamental architecture of this app. And like, so like, I know that it doesn't sound like a big deal to you to just like throw a little X, Y, Z into this game. But actually, like, it would be such a huge refactor. And I'm not just trying to avoid the work. The fact that it would be such a huge architecture is telling me that that's basically a different game.

Travis (54:50)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah, it's like incompatible with the way this works. Yeah.

John (55:13)
Yes, like understanding, I mean, this is obvious. Maybe this is just like junior developer brain, you know, galaxy brain for the first time. That's like, like, like we literally modeled the problem.

And if the change we're making is so big that we have to remodel the entire problem, like that's a big change. Not just a big change because that's going to take me 40 hours. It's a big change because you're like really fundamentally changing the thing. the... Yeah. Yeah. And so it, and so I, and I think I, I'm...

Travis (55:44)
Yeah, and have to completely rethink how it works and how it interacts with everything else. And yes, right.

John (55:53)
gave this example, I was talking to Caleb Porzio in New York. One thing I found is that this is like my end with every developer is that every developer really wants to talk about game design. I was talking to Caleb for a long time about this. And I was like, I've had this revelation about other things where like an idea pops into my head about.

So I have this game called Pork Barrel that I've been testing that is like a web-based game that is like significantly more complicated than other stuff that I've done. It's like, it's really fun, it's really interesting, it's based on auctions. you, so basically there's like five different actions that you could take, but like you and I have to blindly submit how much money we're willing to pay for that action. And then whoever has the highest bid

gets to take it, but the person who lost gets their money back. So it's a really interesting dynamic of auctions. I had this like, I was kind of exploring like, what are all of the cool actions you could take? are all the ways that we could tinker with the system and all the different reasons you might want to be bidding on these different actions.

Travis (56:50)
We're here.

John (57:08)
And I had some pretty crazy ones that was like, that's interesting. There's a way to build that in the system. That could work. And occasionally, I would run into one where I'm like, that is such a...

fundamental change that I would have to put like a big nasty if statement into the middle of like the main event of this game, which is like that you submitted a bid, you know, and I was like, it's it is a theoretically interesting idea, but I can picture it in my code and like what it looks like is this thing, this event that used to be pristine is now like

hard to read and weird. like, if you came into the code base and were like, how does the like submit bid for an auction event work? In the old world, you would understand it. In the new world, you'd be like, what is this? And like that, so.

Travis (57:52)
Yeah.

Yeah, right.

John (58:10)
just thinking about programming games, like that is so interesting to me that I'm like, I think also what that means, what I've found is that that also means it's confusing, it's gonna be confusing for the player.

Travis (58:21)
Yeah, even if they won't, I think even if they won't know why, like even if they won't be able to identify like, this is obviously there's this complexity in the back end. Like it'll just feel, it'll expose itself. Like you're saying. Yeah.

John (58:31)
Yes.

Because at end of the day, it's like the player has to have some intuition of what's going on. And if the intuition of what's going on is just like, well, you submit a bid, but if the state of the world is this, it's like kind of this other thing is happening. But if the state of the world is this, then this thing is happening. And if this edge case is happening, actually, they're like kind of not submitting a bid and it's getting hijacked by another player, like whatever. And as soon as you're in that world where you're like,

Travis (58:37)
Yeah.

John (59:03)
to a player or even if this is not a game to a user, there has to be some intuition of like, I'm gonna take an action and there's gonna be a consequence that makes sense. that, yeah, yeah. so I think that's a modeling games out with event sourced code has made me, it's like opened up a new compartment of my game design brain, I think.

Travis (59:13)
be like dependable.

Yeah, interesting. Okay. I feel like there's got to be something there about that, modeling a physical game, you know, as a, as a program for the testing. Yeah. There's, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. There's, so like you said, I mean, like you're saying, there's so much overlap there. Hmm. Cool. All right. okay. I'm going to get into some, we've been chatting for a good while. I don't want to take too much of your time, but,

John (59:39)
It's very interesting. It'd be fun to try. I'm interested in that.

No worries.

Travis (59:57)
Got some lightning round questions. One, OK, some of these are related or on topic. Some of them are totally not. So but no pressure. Top three maybe or so physical games and top three or so video games or whatever that means to you.

John (1:00:00)
baby, okay cool I'm ready.

Great.

Hmm.

Ooh, okay. And I'll actually have a number of these on the shelf. physical games. So I'll start with an obvious one that is just like, but I think it's like, it's just so undeniable in terms of bang for your buck, because you're always fighting the complexity thing of like, how complex do I want to get with this thing versus like how much payoff is there?

Travis (1:00:36)
Mm-hmm.

Especially if you're playing with people who aren't like super. Yeah. Yeah. Yep.

John (1:00:47)
which is most of my life. I don't have super heavy games on my shelf because I don't play, my friends don't like those games. And I kind of also don't really like those games, but yeah, yeah. I got through like 10, I got through like 10 rounds of Gloomhaven and it was like, that's enough. Yeah.

Travis (1:00:53)
Same here.

Like sometimes, sometimes.

Okay, yeah, I've never played it, yes, I'm familiar.

John (1:01:10)
Okay, so I think Codenames is the absolute heaviest bang for your buck that you can get. It is deceptively sophisticated and harder than people think it is, and people think it's a light casual game, and it's actually like, no, it's like...

kind of hard and like pretty intellectually demanding. And it's so fun and it works with every group of people. As a game designer, like if I made something of that caliber, I'd be like, I can go retire, I'm done. Yeah.

Travis (1:01:46)
It's like your life's achievement. Yeah. It's like your masterpiece. Yeah. I love how much it like the game, how the game goes and how you play is, is yes, it's, depends on how the game is designed. Like it's based on that, but it's also so much about the specific interpersonal dynamic of the two people who are on a team. Like that is so fun to me, how that totally can change how the, like how you play.

John (1:02:06)
Yes, totally.

I've played it with like a 10 year old. I've played it with people with strangers in a board game store. And then I've played it with like where both of my parents were on my team. And it was like, I was giving completely different kinds of clues, you know, it's like inside jokes and all this different, it's fascinating. It's totally fascinating. I also think.

Travis (1:02:24)
Right, right.

I love that any of that kind of game that does that.

John (1:02:33)
And the last thing I'll say about it also is that I think the clue giver, it's so funny to watch when people play for the first time, they start by guessing and they go like, this is kind of hard. And then they say, me be the clue giver. And their heads, that's the easy role. And then they, I'll give good clues. Yeah. And then they go over there and they realize, and this is my favorite part of it, is that in order to give good clues, you essentially have to design a little puzzle.

Travis (1:02:49)
It's like, I'll good clues. Like, what are you doing? I'll do, yeah, exactly. Yeah.

John (1:03:03)
Because you have to you're like, hey go around this stuff Don't don't touch this stuff, but do touch this stuff And then I have to I have to give you almost like a New York Times crossword clue About this thing and it's like well designing a little puzzle on the fly turns out is pretty hard

Travis (1:03:20)
Yeah, really hard. then you're like, that's the perfect clip. And then you see that one other card on there and you're like, shit, can't. That won't work.

John (1:03:24)
Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's a genius little game. I love it. Other ones that I love, I'm not thinking about it too hard, the one right behind me, Heat, is a pretty new game that... Yeah.

Travis (1:03:36)
Okay. Yeah, I've never played that, but it's on my list to maybe get it. Okay.

John (1:03:41)
It was one of those ones that like, I don't think they were planning on it being a huge hit and then it was a huge hit and then they were out of print for like a whole year. But I just love it. I can play it over and over. It's so fun. It's like a simple racing game, but it's great. And then, let me see. One other.

I'll say one other light one that I think is a fun one that's a little bit less popular is Cat in the Box. The hook of it is, it's sort of Spades or Hearts, like a trick-taking game. But the trick of it is, no pun intended, is that the cards don't have a suit and there's a board out in the middle that has a grid of like...

four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, and all the four suits. So when you play a four, you can be like, this one is a red four. And then you mark that now no one can play, the red four has been played. So it gets into this whole paradox, the suit of the card is not determined until it's played. Exactly, a possibility. So then you're looking at this four in your hand, you're like, I need to play like,

Travis (1:04:51)
Okay.

So it's like all wild, but that's a shrinking pool of, yeah. Okay.

John (1:05:04)
a trump card. have a four, but the four of the trump card has been taken. So I'm going to have to use it gets really interesting really fast. but so that's, that's a fun one. I played, played that one a lot with my family.

Travis (1:05:12)
Cool.

Cool. What about non-physical games?

John (1:05:21)
Yeah, I'm a total sucker for Dark Souls, Bloodborne, those are... They took forever to stick for me, but Dark Souls, Bloodborne, Elden Ring, those games. That's like a whole... Those are the games that I've played definitely by far the most over the last five years. I don't have as much time for video games as I used to, but those are the ones that I love and I just sink my teeth into them.

I just go crazy for them. Bloodborne is my favorite of the bunch. And then if I were to pick a Mario game, seems like if it was a top three, there would have to be a Mario game in there. The one that I don't know if it's the best, but the one that I have played the most is definitely Super Mario World on Super Nintendo, which I have.

Travis (1:06:05)
or it's gotta be in there.

John (1:06:21)
right here. And that one, I've just played it a million times. I just love it so much. It's like probably one of the easiest Mario games. It's like not one of the more challenging ones, but the world is just so fun. It just feels so good. I really love it. And then for a third one, I will say...

Travis (1:06:22)
Nice, okay.

John (1:06:48)
Just a game that's not the... It's not my favorite game in the world, but I think it is just so interesting and I have recommended it to so many people is Journey. I don't if you ever played that. It's been around... I think it came out on PlayStation 3, but it's this really interesting, just two-hour, really beautiful experience. And I think you can get it remastered for PlayStation now. But it's like, you just climb up...

Travis (1:06:59)
Hmm. No.

John (1:07:18)
this mountain. And it's really beautiful. And then throughout the game, you just like randomly bump into other players online who are also going up the mountain. And you can't directly interact with them or like talk to them. But it's just like you're on your journey. They're on their journey. And you can kind of like run up to each other and like emote sort of. like that's it. And it's just it's just very like meditative.

Travis (1:07:31)
interesting.

Mm-hmm. You're just there. Huh.

Uh-huh.

Yeah.

John (1:07:47)
beautiful. It's this thing that I the way a lot of people describe it is like if someone says games aren't art you're like go play Journey and talk to me again you know yeah yeah

Travis (1:07:59)
Cool. that's interesting. I like that. cool. All right, next lightning round question. Do you have a favorite book recently or all time?

John (1:08:10)
I think I just, so I was not enough of a reader for a long time. And I started reading a lot more in the last few years, partly because of the train. I'm in New York City and I try not to be on my phone on the train. I try to read and it's been, it's meant that I've gotten through a lot more books, which has been really nice. So I just started going through the Cormac McCarthy books and I had not.

Travis (1:08:31)
Yeah.

Yeah.

John (1:08:39)
done his books before. And I think I just did the road. And yeah, also. so yeah, here's the worst part. But so that I, I do not mean to like gloss over this or be too like caddy about this. My mom got really sick last Christmas, and like almost died. And she didn't miraculously. It was amazing. And she's great and healthy now. But

Travis (1:08:43)
Do you have a favorite? Okay. you just read the road and you're not like sobbing on right now.

That's good, I'm glad, yes.

John (1:09:07)
I was finishing the road while that was happening and I was like, she was like, like coming out of her coma and I was just like, I think I just need to like finish this book here. I'd like, I know that maybe there's one train of thought, which is like, don't read this book next to her while she's, but that was like, I'm in the middle of this book and it feels cathartic. And I just like, finished that book like,

Travis (1:09:09)
my god. That's terrible.

Sure, right.

John (1:09:33)
like next to her hospital bed and just like wept. I think The Road is the best book I've ever read.

Travis (1:09:36)
Yeah, yeah.

Yeah, man, that's it's I have a actually sent this link to someone today asking for books. have a page on my site that's just like, you know, books that I generally recommend, you know, like, hey, through all stages of life, you know, stuff from when I was a kid, like just good books. But the road is on there. But it has a note, a caveat. And it's like, you probably shouldn't read this. I read it before I had a kid and I don't think.

John (1:10:01)
Yeah.

Yeah. I can't even imagine the, yeah, I was, yeah.

Travis (1:10:08)
don't think I could read it now. I think it would be really bad for me to read it now.

John (1:10:14)
Yeah, yeah, it's too, I don't think I'll ever read it again. Yeah.

Travis (1:10:18)
Exactly. right. But incredible. mean, incredible book. Have you read? Have you read some of you've read his other stuff or some of his other stuff?

John (1:10:25)
So then I just, I finished All the Pretty Horses this summer. Loved it. Yeah, so I wanna do the other two of the trilogy, which I'm really excited about. And then I started No Country for Old Men. And then I was like a little bit not ready for violence. And I was like the first like 10 pages of No Country for Old Men. I was like, right. This is like the most violent story ever. So I might go on a slight hiatus, but I'm gonna go back soon.

Travis (1:10:29)
Gosh, that trilogy's so good.

It's just so good.

Basically,

Nice, okay, yeah, all the pretty horses and then the two after that, the crossing and I can't remember the other one are so good. Yeah, yeah, I discovered those in, I think in college and read them in college and it's like, writing can be so beautiful, you know.

John (1:10:58)
Blood Meridian, is that the other one? Yeah.

he's so good. Yeah, I also love that like, he doesn't go. He doesn't

Travis (1:11:08)
Yeah, it's so good.

John (1:11:18)
Like he'll go 20 pages without saying anything philosophical and then he'll drop like one sentence that makes you go like whoa, whoa, hold on. Hold on. on. on like Yeah he's so good

Travis (1:11:21)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

It's like the most profound. Like it's just, it's just, there's just narrative and the plot is advancing and then bam, you're like, you run smack into something. Yeah. I read recently, I started to read Blood Meridian because I've seen it mentioned so many times and I didn't get through it. And I imagine I'll come back to it at some point, but I don't know. yeah. Okay. I think I remember seeing some.

John (1:11:36)
Yeah, it's so good.

Yeah.

Yeah, they're making a movie right now, apparently. Yeah. Yeah.

Travis (1:11:55)
Cool, well, Cormac McCarthy, mean, obviously. I agree. Good, excellent, excellent choice.

John (1:11:58)
Yeah. My book taste is not nearly as developed as my game taste. And so I have the most normie answer ever of, how about some of the most beloved American novels?

Travis (1:12:10)
I mean, I don't know how normie Cormac McCarthy is, is it? I don't know, I guess.

John (1:12:14)
Yeah, well, I guess I also said Dark Souls and Mario for a game. you know, that's, yeah, I'm right down the middle. Yeah.

Travis (1:12:19)
That's true, right. Yeah, yeah. It's good. It's a good place to be some of the time. What about a favorite movie or TV show? Again, either recently or like all time.

John (1:12:29)
okay. All time for TV. I think Sopranos has got to be the best TV show. I don't know if it's my favorite. I got like a little bit burned out on watching it because I just like, I began to hate Tony Soprano. But like favorite.

to go back to. I really love I grew up just absolutely loving The Simpsons and I still go back to it and just think of the writing as genius. those two more normie answers man I really am right down the middle today. movies a movie that I saw recently that has really affected me.

Travis (1:13:07)
That's okay.

John (1:13:20)
is Perfect Days. Did you see this? It's a Japanese movie. It played in US theaters and like got, I think it got nominated for some stuff. So like it had a run here, but it's just a movie about this middle-aged guy who cleans public toilets. But he is like content. And

Travis (1:13:23)
Hmm, don't think I've heard of that.

John (1:13:47)
It's just this like kind of slow meditative movie that just like shows him like wake up at five, do his morning routine, clean toilets, and there's like kind of like annoying stuff happening around him. And he's just like looking up at the trees, smiling, enjoying life.

Travis (1:14:00)
happening.

John (1:14:07)
gathering his plants. carries a little camera around and takes photographs. It was this movie that like, it really, really moved me. I thought it was, it's beautiful and the acting is really good. And it, I don't know, I heard someone say like, you can tell how good a movie is by how long you still think about it afterwards. And this was one, it's like, I couldn't get it out of my head. And then I like bought the Blu-ray and I just like leave it on sometimes because I'm just like, it's deep and

Travis (1:14:27)
Yeah.

Yeah. Just wanted to be there. Yeah. Well, that is both not a normie answer on that one and also on theme for our other stuff about the process is the point. It's good. I like it. Cool. OK. So confession, I have not watched The Sopranos, which I've watched tons of like,

John (1:14:37)
my head now. Yeah.

Yeah, I can do a deep cut on a movie. Yeah, that's right.

Travis (1:15:02)
TV and like shows that are like well-regarded. just have never gotten to one round of watching the Sopranos. Have you watched the Americans?

John (1:15:03)
Yeah.

I watched the first couple seasons of and I really enjoyed it. didn't intentionally quit The Americans. I just at some point lost track of it. Is that your number one?

Travis (1:15:18)
Okay. You should. That maybe I maybe think that's the best TV show ever made. It's yeah. It's like the character development is pretty incredible.

John (1:15:28)
Yeah, that's great. It's so fun.

My issue with TV these days is it demands too much of me. know, the thing is like movies, like in the amount of time that I could watch, you know, five seasons of, or whatever, six seasons of Mad Men or whatever, I could, I could watch some, and there's more good movies out there than I could even finish in my life. And I, and each one is just like, I can watch it then I'm done, you know? Yeah, exactly.

Travis (1:15:53)
Exactly, yes.

Yeah, there's no scope creep. And you go into it knowing what you're committing. Yeah. Yeah.

John (1:16:04)
Yes, totally. And you can even turn it off halfway through.

Travis (1:16:07)
Right, yeah. Yeah, that's a problem with lot of TV shows is especially though seems like a lot of times they tend to just drag out there like, we're going to keep milking this and this more.

John (1:16:17)
I know. It's such a thing where you get to season three of something and you're like, by the way, did you know the side character has a son and he has to go to the Vietnam War? And you're like, okay, let's... Just ramping the stakes on everything. Yeah. Yeah.

Travis (1:16:26)
Great.

Yeah, it's like cash grab. Cool. All right, last lightning round question. Do you have a recommendation for a thing, like a physical product thing that you just really think is great and you recommend to people? Anything, any random thing.

John (1:16:49)
Okay, I promise I'm not just being lazy and saying the first thing that I saw because I actually really do believe in this thing. I am sitting at, so for a while I was like, I want a standing desk. I want an adjustable, like up and down desk. And you know, there's all these things that you could buy for like a thousand dollars that have like an electronic thing. And I always just have this feeling that I'm like,

Travis (1:16:56)
Okay, yeah.

John (1:17:12)
Does the electronics, like something's gonna go wrong. There's gonna be some kind of problem. It's gonna be kind of finicky. I don't know. I didn't trust it for that amount of money and was just like, couldn't ever pull the trigger on it. And I was talking to somebody, it was a client actually, and it was somebody who worked at one of our clients and she's like, she and her husband do like real like work. They're like very handy. And I saw in the background,

that she was sitting at a rolling, husky workbench. And I was like, what is that? And she's like, it's a husky workbench. She's like, it's like half the price of those desks you're looking at. And it has like a hand crank so you can bring it up. Yeah, I got mine from Home Depot. It can hold a weight of 500 pounds on the top.

Travis (1:17:55)
huh. Yep. I've seen this like at Home Depot. Yeah.

Okay. Yeah, right. Yeah.

John (1:18:07)
It's a workbench, it's made for power tools. But the surface of it is nice. And then there's these drawers, it's like shop drawers, like those really wide, yeah, like a toolbox. So I have two basically shop drawers that are hold.

Travis (1:18:17)
Yeah, right. Like a toolbox, yeah.

John (1:18:24)
an unbelievable amount of stuff, like all my office supplies. In one of them, I have all these like pens, papers, stuff. In another one, I have like all my electronic, all my random cords. And then if I want to do a standing desk, I can like hand crank it. Also, it's on wheels. And it was like 350 bucks. It's like literally half the price of these like fancy coworking space standing desks. And I was like...

Travis (1:18:46)
Yeah.

I'm incredibly jealous right now.

John (1:18:50)
How does everyone not doing this? And she was like, yeah, I've got several of them. She's like, I have one of them with all my craft supplies. I have one of them with like actual woodworking stuff. And then one of them is my office one. And we just like wheel them around. I was like, how are we not, how did we all miss the boat on this? Yeah.

Travis (1:19:05)
Brilliant. I have one of those fancy electric standing desks and one, I never raise it up and actually stand at it. Although it is nice because it lets you get like just the right height, know? So like compared to like a fixed height desk, like that part's nice. But it doesn't have drawers. And I'm always like occasionally I'll be like, man, I should really like figure out how to add some drawers to this thing. Like, but just put, some stuff handy. You know, I've got like this thing on top that has some drawers and it's all cluttery and like.

John (1:19:13)
Yeah.

Yes.

Yes. Just I know. Well, it's not too late. mean, I could see a life where I get several of these. And it's also so funny. such a slap in the face to be like, yeah, you get like something that actual working people use, you know, like and I was like, it's funny because yeah, exactly. It's like, no, it's like working people have this figured out. And like I would said I was moving stuff around in here and I

Travis (1:19:36)
Where were you six years ago, John?

Yeah, right. Yeah. It's not absurdly overpriced.

John (1:20:04)
I had to put my full, I had to like stand on this to like put something up and it was like, doesn't matter. It can hold 500 pounds, you know? Yeah. Yeah. Pretty cool.

Travis (1:20:09)
Yep, 500 pounds. It's all good. Yeah, that's awesome. Cool. All right. Well, we've been talking for a while. This has been extremely fun and enjoyable. I will tease a tiny bit. had two topics to maybe discuss today. So maybe another time, you know, if you're up for it, maybe we'll we'll do another episode and I'll.

John (1:20:26)
yeah.

Yeah.

And yeah, I would love to talk about that one as well.

Travis (1:20:36)
We'll deep dive on the secret other topic and I'll leave that out there as a teaser for people. But man, thanks so much for coming in and I love nerding out with people on whatever they're into. It's so fun. Yeah.

John (1:20:41)
So.

Thanks for having me, man. This is very fun. obviously as you have probably picked up, it doesn't take much to get me talking about the stuff that I get excited about. So, yeah.

Travis (1:20:55)
I love it. That's the whole point, man. That's it. love to hear. I love it when people are excited about their thing. So that's super fun. And now you've got my gears turning on that modeling the games as programs thing.

John (1:21:02)
cool.

Here's my challenge to you, is there going to be a special episode where you talk about your thing and what is your thing?

Travis (1:21:14)
Yeah, so maybe someday. Yeah, I don't, I feel like I don't have like a thing that I could go for an hour about, honestly. I think right now my thing is learning about other people's stuff, you know? Yeah, but eventually, you know? Yeah, cool. Well, thanks. Yeah, thanks so much, John. We'll talk soon.

John (1:21:19)
Okay.

Cool, I'm into it.

Great. Well, thanks for having me. This is very fun.

Cool.

Travis (1:21:42)
Alright, I hit pause or stop or whatever. So just make sure you leave your browser window