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From the subtleties of typography to the emotional impact of color, and the way everyday objects influence our lives, our guests share their unique perspectives on the power of design. Through candid interviews, we’ll get a closer look at the challenges they’ve faced, the breakthroughs they’ve had, and how design is not just about aesthetics, but about problem-solving, communication, and making an impact.
Join host Rae, as Type Speaks aims to inspire, inform, and showcase the voices behind the visuals.
This podcast is supported by WEGL 91.1 FM, Auburn University’s radio station. weglfm.com
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Welcome to The Type Speaks, the show where I dive into the stories, struggles, and sparks of inspiration behind great design. I'm your host, Rae, and I'm gonna be pulling back the curtain on the creative process, but not just the work itself, but the people who make it happen. Each episode, I sit down with a different creative mind to uncover how they think, work, and everything in between. So if you're curious about the why behind design and the stories of the people shaping our world one idea at a time, you're in the right place. Hello, hello and welcome in to the 14th episode of Type Speaks and the first video video part I guess of Type Speaks. I'm joined with the wonderful McGay Baker who is a tabletop role-playing game designer independent publisher and quilt historian whose work has significantly shaped modern narrative game design along with her partner Vincent Baker. She has co-created Apocalypse World the groundbreaking system game system that launched the now widespread powered by the apocalypse system. That'll sound right to you. Yeah. Thank you so much for having me. is fun. I'm very excited. You're going to come to Auburn very soon. Yes. I'm going to be there for Halloween, which I'm excited for. 29th, 30th, and 31st. If you're listening before the 29th, 31st, you should check that out and be there. I wish I could quote to you the things I'm doing. I know there's like... I'm going to some classrooms and I'm doing some public appearance thing talking in the evening and I'm sure you can find out more about it if you look on, you know, whatever Auburn website. was a better journalist. I may have had that information, but I don't, unfortunately. But I'm sure people can find it. interactive experience. Yeah. Just like just like games. Hey, yeah. What? So, yeah. My my first kind of question overall was, How did, as a graphic designer, I'm just wondering, because I see all these games and I'm like, wow, this is wonderful and beautiful and people do this, but actually getting to design the actual, the game itself, how did you get into that? How was that even introduced to you? Because you started off in like 2006, right? Yeah, there's a, that's a really interesting kind of two-part question, because one is about the, designing a game and then about, like, doing the graphic design design around the game. um And it's really a fascinating process. um A lot of my first draft stuff when I'm just dumping notes is that I'm usually dumping notes either into a physical notebook or into a Google Doc. uh That doesn't have a lot of graphic design. um times when like my first game, Thousand One Nights, a game of enticing stories, I did so much of the design on that game while I was strolling my youngest child around town and writing in a notebook. So like, oh, stop here, write a thing or like in line for picking up the older kids, hang out, write a thing. So of course, there's a little bit of graphic design that happens with pen and paper. that you get to make at least notes. I get to make at least notes to myself like, oh, this should be boxed out, know, this needs to be in bold sort of thing. ah But then once it hits ah the process of how do I present this information in a way that it is accessible oh and that it creates a document that people can reproduce. the sort of play experience and conversations that I'm looking to foster in doing game design. Then it comes through a ton of graphic design questions. Like what font do I use? What shape, like what physical dimensions is the final book? How many pages are there? So what do I have for design on the spine? Like all of that is definitely part of that um right from the get-go. How did I come to it? So I grew up playing games, all kinds of games, from when I was a little, kid. And it's really interesting to think that one of my big design influences on uh game design, I didn't realize this till right now, is probably the Delaire's book of Greek myths and the Delaire's book of Norse myths. I was also, course, as a little kid playing Dungeons and Dragons, I was, you know, seven, eight, nine, ten years old. uh And so all the like, there was that there, but it wasn't ever as grabby to me as um those, you know, Dolores books of uh mythology, which has a lot of graphic design, gorgeous color illustrations, beautiful text layout, lots of breathing space around the text blocks. And so that's, those are definitely, I never put that together until this question, but those are definitely part of my, I'm glad I could jog that memory for you. That's super cool. Yeah. Um, how did I get, I don't know. So the game design piece is easy, right? The game design piece is I always played games. always made up games from the time I was little. And so coming to a place of like, I think I want to do. this bit. That that was just a you know, that was a development process like any like any craft and you practice your craft so you can produce your art. And it was just like figuring out how do I make this happen. It's funny because like I just said game design, the games game design part was easy, but it's also not easy, right? You're juggling so many interacting pieces. And one of the things that's really interesting to me about the sort of technical part of game design is that really I'm writing a technical manual, right? It has to be extremely clear. um And it's a technical manual for a sort of complex process that I have to make sure I've conveyed all the pieces so that people can, you know, have an experience kind of like I'm hoping that they'll. And then I have to layer that into graphic design and font choice and flourishes and then there's another piece in there which is the design of the voice of the game. Sort of what language am I using in the text and how does it convey what I'm saying. You have a follow up question? feel like I gave you a good answer but also not quite an answer. It was a good answer. think the idea of like it always starts playing games obviously. I wanted to ask Because for me, when I'm thinking about, obviously as a graphic designer, I have my senior project coming up and I'm not going to lie, the thought of designing a game has come up. It's happened before. Some people have done card games, board games, various types of things. And for senior project, you get to design one big project of your own choosing. for me, when I was thinking about if I wanted to do this, the first thing that comes to mind is like what it would look like. I'm a graphic designer. I think in visuals. So I just wondered when you like begin a new game. Like, does a mechanic come first, like themes? Or like, what is the first kind of inception of that idea for you? Right. um When I'm thinking of a new game, really like, it's what story do I want to tell? Like, what's what am I thinking about? What how do I how do I tell that story? And then immediately it's what mechanics support that story? You know, how do I make something that is So that the mechanics are not in competition with the story because that happens a lot. It's super easy. Every game designer has done this. There's a whole bunch of things where you have a story and then you say, well, let's use this mechanic for it. And it doesn't work, right? If you're looking for a game that has a lot of choice and a lot of open-endedness. you narrow, if you like nail it down to a mechanic that's very tight and closed and like, this is what it's doing, you're not gonna get that. You know, there are games that are great games that have this grinding conflict of mechanic. Growing up, there was, not, don't, like nothing comes springing to mind. Or if it does, I'm not gonna say, cause that's kind of cool. But there are definitely games that I played out there that had like the idea of this is a sort of interpersonal, social, collaborative community type conversation. And I'm going to make you roll, you know, 3D tens against each other and whoever's numbers highest wins. It's not, they don't match. So that's a big deal. So really for in terms of a capstone senior project sort of thing, especially in design, it, I mean, like that's the thing, like figure out what you want to tell. What do you, what do you want to say first? And then you can go from there, like whether that looks like a poster or a game or a fashion show. you know, figure out what it, how you express that story that you want to tell in a way that means that other people can understand it. I'm kind of seeing the through line of just storytelling and how to tell a story. that's pretty Like the best way. I can, it's interesting because I couldn't even think of mechanics in a way that's like, aiding to storytelling. That's why think game design is so interesting to me. Obviously, I asked this in another interview. And I liked the answer. guess I'm gonna ask you a little bit differently. But what would you personally uh define as good game design and like kind of what good qualities show through a good game design? Or just a good game in general? Good, wow, those are fascinating questions. What is good game design? Boy, I mean, it's, I think a good game design. has um You're saying something about the human condition. You're making some commentary on your insight into that situation that you're examining, wherever your characters are. You are having characters that are shaped for the experience you want. They're fit to the purpose. um That's really, that's good. I mean, it's such a huge question because of course I'm thinking of like, now I'm thinking like board game design and playground games and card games and how many of them have like slightly, they each have a different sort of design spec. Yeah, like a good game design expresses what you want to express in the rules so that other people can do that thing. And it has a, I think, has some sort of vision or audience in mind. You it's not trying to be all things to all people because that's a way to make some really bland, bland stuff. It has to do what it says on the box. You know, if you have, if you're advertising, if you're saying, if all your graphic design and your text and everything says, this is what this game is about. and then it's about something else, then your players are gonna be dissatisfied, you know, like with any other thing, any other form of storytelling media, movie, book, album of music, you know, it has to do what it says. Yeah, I think that's my answer. I yeah, I wanted to kind of grab something with what you said, talked about like, can't design for everyone. a game just for everyone in general. It kind of makes a flat game almost. I kind of wanted to talk a bit more about that, about do you have kind of players in mind when you start designing a game or when you're kind of in that process, you kind of have a certain, I guess obviously a certain audience in mind. For me, have usually, there's a lot of marketing research on this about like, imagining your target person and like what they're doing and like making a whole persona for who your target audience is. I don't do that um pretty much at all ever. um The games that I design are like me saying a thing like here's what I've made and then um trusting that the audience for that game will find it. Um, and part of that is being willing to be enthusiastic about my work and not shut up about it and be like, Hey, I made this thing. It's cool. It does this, you know, that's fun. Um, but I also like, you know, I've been doing this for 25 years. Um, so there's a lot of, um, letting go. You know, I do the best I can. I make it the best I can that does like all the things I want it to do the best I can. You know, I said that three times. And so that's what it is. Right. And I can't run around saying, oh, you're playing my game wrong or, whatever. I love to answer questions. If people are like, oh, hey, I have a question about the rules or a question about this. Awesome. Here for that. But I. I definitely have games that I've made that I've been enthusiastic about and I've put them up and like a couple people play them. It's cool. Yay. I had fun making it. And then there's other things that we've put out, know, Thousand One Nights and Siren and that are my games and then Apocalypse World, of course, and um Murderous Ghosts, very seasonally appropriate and Under Hollow Hills and other things that we are very, very glad have a larger audience. But yeah, talking about the audience in kind of, it's really interesting because in design, there's this dichotomy of like commercial work and designing specifically for a specific person in mind and an audience and market research. And then there's just design for design sake, like visually appealing things just for whoever finds it or who audience wants to come on it. Yeah. So I liked that. I kind of like the idea of just being like, I want to make this game because I like it. And if you're like me and you like it, come play it. Yeah. Awesome. Yeah. It's just, it's very human. I mean, there's an overlap graphic design there, right? Like if you're designing shirts, know, t-shirts or posters or buttons or whatever, there is very much like, this is what I like. This is what my work looks like. If you like it, awesome. Yeah. You know? Yeah. Yeah. I kind of want to talk about players in general, because again, like when I'm playing games, I don't really think about like, someone had to sit here and tweak how I'm playing it and how the game mechanics work. So I have the optimal experience. Yeah. As much as I think most players try to break the game constraints, the constraints are still there. So I wanted to ask about how do you How do you know when to limit a player's ability and how to let them free? m Because there's a story that you are telling through a game, but also you let the players themselves tell their own story. that makes any sense. Yeah, that makes perfect sense. It is a delicate work. It is a really important thing, think, of table top role playing game design um is to find... Imagine a coloring book. Right? And I don't mean like the like now we're in a whole place of like weird art, like draw your way to relaxation. I don't mean that. I mean, like kids coloring books, right? Like we all do. Little kids. And then there's there's a structure, there's a shape, and then we get to fill it in with our own color. Our own things that we want we can draw plaid or polka dots or whatever. Nothing is saying it has to be all fill in uh And then if you've ever encountered the anti coloring books, which if not, I highly recommend They are much more open-ended right so you have a picture of a seascape around the edges and then a like I meant, know, what did you find buried in the shipwreck you just have open-ended pages, which for some folks is really fun. But I think that's part of the job of a good tabletop role-playing game, I think, is to leave the space, you know, make sure you're actively leaving space for the players to color it in, right? Because if I've filled in all the details, there's no room. And I have a couple games, the... years of time where I'm like, oh, there's no, there's no space left. I've gotten so excited about world building in this. I've built the whole world. There's no, there's no space. Okay. Well, I had fun building it. Um, and so that question of how to find the edges of the design space, um, that's an ongoing, like one should be asking that every time as you're doing the design. How do you limit that? How do you shape that? The rules text, course, is one. The whatever player sheets, you your character sheet or other table aids is another, which of course leads like super clearly into the intersection of game design and graphic design. You know, what's on the sheet? What are you giving them? What are the places, you know? recognition that people need a place on the sheet to draw. Do you include that? you not include that? All these things. What are the mechanics and how do they support, um how do they structure your player's experience? Are they handling dice? Are they handling cards? Are they not handling anything? How does that create creative constraints on them? Because we thrive in creative constraints. We want enough space, but we actually do want some limits. And for this, think the most wonderful game to look at for this, easiest thing is tag, right? We all played tag as kids. And the way that it becomes quickly really unfun if there's no other constraint, because one kid's just going to run. and then nobody can get to catch them. And then it's like, oh, come on. You know, okay, Jane, we get it. You're fast. But we need creative constraints in order for it to be satisfying in this sort of shared experience. And that tips over into tabletop role playing games too. Unless we all sit down together at the table understanding, okay, there's... no rules. It's wide open. We're just going to make stuff up, which can be fun. But we've given ourselves the creative constraint of for this table for this time and place, right? Because that's fun in that moment. And if we're like, okay, for this game, but even right away, real quick, it's going to be, right, there's no rules. What if we're dinosaurs on a spaceship? Right now we have rules. You know? Yeah. So it's a process of keeping enough open space, providing enough creative constraints, and choosing those creative constraints so that they drive your underlying uh desire as a designer. Or like, here's what I'm looking to put in front of you is this experience. And that's so different than being a visual designer in ways, because you're trying to design an experience. And that's challenging. Yeah. It's interesting because becoming more together in a sense. I'm saying that um now, obviously, I'm putting together like there are, there's a job called experience designers and user interface designers that are designing visually. Obviously, this is most of the time for like apps or websites. Advertising. Advertising purposes. There's also designers that design. I worked on a project. Last year, it was like an interactive museum workshop. Love that! For people to come in. As a museum curator, thank you for that. I love that. I wish I had a bigger budget to do that sort of thing at my museum. It was like an interactive art and design space. Actually, if you want to learn about it, it won last year the Biodesign. national competition for best display. if you're interested in looking that up, I helped uh actually, it was my old co-host Emiko's project that I was put on to help with. So I think it's very interesting that, thank you, that like, it's visual, visuals now, the graphic designer's job is becoming more experience-based in general as well as in the industry. So I think the idea of game design is kind of coming into that. A lot more students are thinking, oh, wow, if I can design an app, I could also do something more fun like a board game. Yeah, it is. You're so right. There's like this, um it's a gradient, like a big multi-point gradient schmear between like. experience design of like, you're going to come into this car that you were launching this new car and we're going to have it be so clean that you can eat off of it. So we're going to serve food on the hood of the car. Isn't that like, whatever, you know? Um, and this is, that's when I heard about an experience design where like that was literally part of the deal was, and then they had like people with squeegees, like after each course, just like squeegee the car. Like, this is weird, but cool. And, um, but like museum interfaces, uh, and interactive displays, advertising, interactive displays. Um, anytime you go to a, like a fair and there's like carnival games or like a corn maze or whatever, like design is everywhere and games are everywhere and they overlap a lot more than we think. I think there's a lot more going on. Sometimes like grocery stores have game design, you know, that's why they put all the like fancy produce up front and it's all sweet and inviting. That's why they put all the non-perishables in the middle. Like they're planning to have you move through the experience in a certain way and it's effective. So yeah. It's interesting. I was just learning. I'm in an art history class and learning about uh the Mesoamerican ball game. And it made me think about how we love games as humans. We love games so much. Like we make these games and we make rules for ourselves and then we play them with our friends and our enemies in that case. Oh my god, Yes. And like, we are now living in a place where we're finally getting to uh an archaeological question. where the archaeological question is not could this be a ritual object, but could this be a game? Because games are so deeply in our DNA. Like we're mammals, ergo we play, and we play games to figure out how we fit in our society. And this is throughout mammals and also Crows play games, so it's throughout Cordata. And I don't know if flatworms play games, but maybe. And, you know, do mushrooms play games? I don't know, probably. I feel like they would. I'm not a biologist, but if any, anything would play a game would be a mushroom. I think so, too. I think that mushrooms probably would play a game. They might already be playing games. With our lives. But that thing, right? That is unbelievably true. And I'm so happy to hear you say it because this is like a steady drum beat I have. It's like playing games is our birthright. It's what we do. It's, we can't not. It's how we experience the world. Like our first work is play to experiment and see things like little tiny, tiny babies, like a three month old who's just figuring out they have hands and they're lying on their back and there's light coming through and there's dust motes in the air and they're figuring out, if I move my hand, then the dust motes move. Because we're tiny scientists and we're tiny game players. can't not from the very beginning. And then all of that just expands out, right? So then we're playing games to figure out how gravity works, right? If I drop this toy, it goes down. And then eventually we're playing games with friends and other people like, hey, let's do a thing together. and then we're just playing all kinds of games. Then someone's like, oh, this young little creature now can start learning about like the rest of their culture, their world, their culture, their community. And now we get all the games where we are mimicking adult behavior around us. And then it just keeps going. The issue is when we get to whatever that point is where someone says we shouldn't anymore. And like, oh, you need time to be serious. Time to be adult. Stop playing games. Maybe you can play bridge or poker or bowling. You can play those. You can follow sports and you play solitaire and you can play sports or you can watch sports. You know, there's just really weird things. And those are actually kind of ah antiquated even for me to say, because that ideology is like so incredibly uh specific to the 1950s. when we're about to enter the New Games movement and about to come into the 1960s and 70s where there's like this incredible resurgence of games, resurgence of play and public games and public play. Like, you know what's fun? A billion tag variations. What if we got a bunch of 20-somethings and 30-somethings together in the park and played a bunch of games? And that's like where then, so I'm born right into that where These games are like, they're starting to be a concept of public playfulness and games as uh a, not just an acceptable, um like, you know, it's really reaching into, oh, this is a thing adults do. You don't have to stop playing games with your friends and you don't have to limit yourself to these specific five board games that everybody has, you know, we can keep going. And that, leads to this incredible explosion we have now of everywhere and everything. don't know why. mean, yeah, it made me think of I don't know why when you're talking about that. I work with children over the summer typically as a camp counselor, an art camp counselor specifically. Yeah. And I have not realized how many of like the games they fill their time with are purely visual. Yeah. Tic Tac Toe, Hangman are these instantly recognizable games to all of these small children. And they can just do it by themselves and do it together. And they will. Like when they're bored, they're like, I want to play Hangman. I want to play Tic Tac Toe. Or they call something different now. um They don't say Hangman anymore. I think in schools they're trying to get away from that violence. I don't know. And maybe that's the right answer. It's really hard. Yeah. And that's one of the interesting things because games pool. You know, there's there's a bunch of games that pool in pre-K. and like nursery school games because that's what's necessary and appropriate for that age sort of that's what they play. And then there's games that pool at each level throughout um school as you continue through, uh partly because of how brain development works and how different like brain development wants different stages of brain development, want different things. um And part of it's how we become like culturally aware. uh and want more complexity or whatever as we grow up. But it's always really interesting to me to step back and look at the fondness that adults have for some of those experiences of the games that pool in elementary school. That like, oh man, I love red light, green light, whatever games that get talking to a bunch of 40 year olds who don't have kids specifically about games they played as children. And they'll be like, all right, yeah, we used to play, we used to play amoeba or we used to play sardines or we used to play all these things. And then it's like, okay, but why do you not? Yeah. It's still fun. Yeah. Why do you know? I would, I would love to play some red light, green light with some of these, uh, some of my DJs here at the radio. You know how fun that would be? So fun. easy. Like that's the thing is that a lot of these games, a lot of the first games we have that actually have a fairly complex rule set are when you know if you went to write it down and like really like people who weren't familiar didn't have the cultural touchstones for red light green light or you know whatever. um It's a couple like a page of rules, couple pages of rules and then you just play it right? Why not? And I think one of the things that comes into the why not is back to experience design about like the whole eighties, maybe nineties, games, corporate bonding games, corporate like let's go on a retreat and everybody's gonna play a game. And people being like, oh my God, I don't wanna do this. That balance of knowing that people play games by their nature. But when you try to make that happen in a place that is not voluntary, what does that do to that drive? know, if you're like have to go to uh a corporate team building retreat and you aren't like, you have to go, you're not gonna, you know, unless you can do the like, all right, well, I have to go, may as well be all in. let's do trust balls. But it um did, I think that's part of the recovery process of getting all the way through high school. And then if you go to college all the way through college, and then if you're in the workforce, recovering from some of that stuff to get to the point where you're like, okay, playing games can be fun. And I can do all these things like everything. You know, we can bring that back and we can design for that. can design fun experiences that we want to have on purpose and make them available for other people. Yeah. And have them be available for everyone. No, I was thinking it was, it is interesting how we have this almost set of games that are like, these are the games you can have, play with your friends. And then these are the games that are considered more nerdy and weird. Like we have these acceptable games. I'm thinking about the typical card games, board games that are very fun. I'm not dogging on Uno for being popular. Oh my god, Uno, love Uno. Uno, best game. Uno's also very interesting because it has set rules, but in public perception, no one follows those rules. There's a separate rule set that everyone knows, but that is not the correct, like the, I'm saying quote unquote, the correct way of playing Uno. Right. And then there's all the house rules and there's house rules. remember when they, they really leaned into that and like, It was great. It was a great moment of an incredibly widespread game that knows it's uh like got a rock solid place in the market leaning into go ahead and hack this. You know, get your house rules in here. You still need to buy our deck of cards, but then get your house rules in. I loved that. Fabulous. Fabulous. Great. Great marketing for that too. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, and great graphic design on that because they had the regular box and then a yellow sticky note that said house rules in the graphic design on the box. It was just a really smart graphic design choice for that. I think also what is so popular about Uno is how simple it is. Colors, numbers. Go. Even if you struggle with either of those things, the colors are still contrasted enough that you can tell they're different colors. And numbers are visually different. design. Yeah, it's really good design. And it's always really interesting to me when Uno uh does a weird design choice. That's not gonna work. And now, like, this is weird. Now we're just talking about design. Do you remember, I don't know when this was, uh Celestial Seasons T? Do you remember when they tried to do a different design and it was like, unsuccessful? Yes. Because like, this little homey artsy beautiful full color art box and then they tried hard to do this now it's going to be white and clean and modern little and it was just like categorically not it's and then they're like whoops you know almost like an inside it's like an outside joke now of design in design because so many companies are doing it and it's failing so hard and so many people are like why did you do this we didn't want that we wanted the original that you had Yeah, people like, we like stability and security and we like innovation in ways that are recognizable and will like bring us along. Not challenge. If we're going to encounter something new, we want to encounter something new. If we have something that is familiar and like established and comfortable, blah, blah, blah, blah. We can totally adapt with change, but you got to adapt. can't slam. but we don't love that. That kind of... I.E. any user face on any digital product ever. That kind of made me think about how a lot of, I think, of course now because of the rise of these critical role dropout, all of these popular game playing like podcasts or even others I've seen some people say this is their first experience and it's this niche podcast and it's awesome to hear but... A lot of people just stick to D &D. They know it, they play it, they love it. And a lot of people are almost intimidated to switch to something else. And I kind of wanted to ask your thoughts about that, because I know I was. My first dive into another game besides D &D was Call of Cthulhu, which was very, it's not actually that different, but it is different. In my head, it was harder. oh, the health mechanics are different and I can't heal and the other stuff. But when I played it, I was like, oh wait, I know what this is. Yeah. It's like rolling different dice at different times. Yeah, exactly. I think that's really interesting. Like when people are like, oh, I don't know. I'm like, hmm, how about that? Right. Because if I got a new board game and I said, hey, come on out, like to my board game crew, whatever that might be, that hypothetical group. And it's like, hey, come on over. Let's, let's try this new board game I got. People are like, awesome, yeah. If I get a new video game, sure. Like, cool, let's try it. There's a new update on Minecraft. All right, new server, let's go. Forget all the time we put into all of our builds on the last server, those mean nothing now. But role playing games have this weird space with that where there is reluctance. And I think there's reluctance for two reasons. And one of them has to do with familiarity. And that's fine. That's no big thing. Just like, hey, let's play this one shot of a different game. know, Martha can't make it tonight. Let's play a one shot of something else instead. Cool. And the other has to do with the level of personal creative investment. that you make in a role-playing game versus a board game. Right, if I'm playing a new board game, I'm just excited about the new board game. And I'll be like, oh, this is cool. Maybe there's mechanics I don't like, that's fine. Maybe I, you know, am really there to hang out with people and I don't really care if I win or lose. That's like half the time for me because I'm just more interested in the game and like. playing the game and looking at how it goes. I get distracted and don't try to win. I just try to explore the game, which I think is hilarious. But in a role playing game, if you really invested in your character, right? Especially in a game that has like a much like a, which has as a marketing strategy, you can just keep playing this game forever. And like, I've been playing this game for six months or six years. And I'm like, I have my character and I have all the backstory and there's all the world building. invested in this world and now you're asking me to go to a different world? I'm like, but my special, special guy. I'm like, okay, your special, special guy is still there. That's fine, but you could have another special, special guy. I think that's really interesting. Then the third factor I think is like all of this, like the world's psychic maelstrom and the pressure that everybody's under right now, right? We have a finite amount of time in a day and the incredible pressure that people are under now versus like, I guess the eighties, like in the eighties, we were just afraid that either AIDS was gonna kill us or there was gonna be a nuclear annihilation. One of those is still true. Those they just found a way to cure. So, yay. But in the 80s, we were like, all right, that's fine. But we were going to play games anyway. But now I think there is a much from what I see sitting here at 54. What I see in people who are 30 and under is like for myself too, the 15 to 30 crowd, which I think is the big target market for role playing games in the way that we're talking about. um People are freaking stressed, right? There's no time because there's no security. There's no jobs. There's no third places where you can hang out with friends, which means there's fewer friends. um It's a lot. It's a lot. And then if there's any part of that that impacts your mental health or, you know, it's just, it's a lot. And so then you get into the thing of just really wanting your comfortable stuff to stay comfortable. Um, and like I said before, you can encounter a new thing, like new game, new video game, new board game, new movie, new music. That's fine. but something that is like what your comfortable stuff is, but not what your comfortable stuff is. Sometimes you need to make a bigger concerted effort for that. And especially for board gaming, excuse me, for tabletop role playing games, you can't make that leap alone. Right? You need, you need three other people. And if you, if you don't have three other people who want to go do this thing with you, that's rough. And especially in this place where, you know, all of those constricting bands on someone's available time and friend group and et cetera, et cetera are true. If you have a group of eight people that you play your game with and you want to try this other game that is really good for three or four people, what do you do? What do you do? And in the... in the 80s and early 90s, was less, it was like, you know, the 10 of us get together and hang out and play D &D, but the five of us were gonna play Shadowrun and then the three of us are gonna play Ars Magica. And I was in all three of those games. And that was fine. I was also in college, so I didn't have to deal with a lot of other things that happened, I guess in the 90s, not the 80s. In the 80s, I was playing D &D and Robotech Macross, the role-playing game. And what was the other one? There was one other one. Anyway. Yeah, I was not playing Vampire The Restraight. I just want to put that on the record. I don't know why. So. Yeah, I have kind of two things I wanted to kind of bounce off on. First was the video game thing. It's interesting when you said that, because for me, My two favorite AAA games are inspired by TTRPGs, which is Fallout and Cyberpunk. They both started as TTRPGs and are now these big video games. One's a franchise. I don't know if Cyberpunk's becoming a franchise, I don't know. But it's easier for me to switch between those worlds in this contained computer than it is for me to play the actual game in person. I never had thought about it like that. It's easy for that one, because I'm thinking about in terms of like, playing Fallout, playing Cyberpunk. Also, I've heard that playing Fallout's not optimized, but it's a whole other conversation. But like, the idea of playing those games in person is more intimidating than me booting up my computer and starting a new world. And I Yeah, because you get to do that just yourself. You get to be in charge, all right, switch on a new world, but you have the familiarity of the game. And if you don't like that world, can ditch out of it really easy because it's just you. That's fine. can play Minecraft in a like, is death, you can boot the world. Or you can play Minecraft in a like, I just want to play in creative because that's what I like. is easy, uh keep inventory on, instant respawn. inventory is the best, Thank you. Yes, it's the best. Keep inventory. And then also like reducing the number of people who have to sleep so that you're not constantly in the chat going, can people sleep? Can somebody sleep? Can people sleep? Oh my God. I'm showing this to the Weagle. We've had three servers so far and every single time I'm in the minority saying, let's keep inventory on guys. And they're like, no, that's easy mode. And what if I want easy mode? So here's the thing for me, I blew out my wrist in August of 2024. had a big writing thing I was doing and I injured my wrist. And to me, creative mode is an accessibility tool in order for me to play. cannot, I physically can't sit there and like click, click, click, click, click, click, click, click, click, click, click, click, click, click, click, click, click, any block I have not actually found in the world. So that's cool. Yeah. um Which means like when I show up at a village and there's three cartographers full of maps, I'm so happy. um But I think that's one of the other really interesting things about game design and uh user interface, which is part of graphic design, is like, how does it accommodate different people coming at that? oh experience. Right. And if it does, some. And if it doesn't, hmm. And we met you talked about Uno and like the colors and the numbers and like how important that is. And also the question about color blindness. Like if you've read green color blindness, what else? How do we make this more accessible for you? um And I just really think it's just always a good question to ask of like, we making this so that you can use it? Yeah. Yeah. And this second point I wanted to add on about, first off, it is true. I would say my generation is incredibly stressed. Yeah. All the time. And it is, I cannot lie, it is that damn phone. Yeah. Yeah. Like, you know, I... I used to get mad at my parents for being like, you're on the phone too much and it's true. I were not built as humans to have so much information coming into our brains all the time about, especially negative things happening all the time. And it makes us a level of knowledgeable and that is good. But also I can see that it makes it is stressful and a lot of, also adding on to the already stressful conditions of the places we live in. Obviously, I'm also thinking outside the studio is our friends at Eagle Eye TV, not radio station, we're the radio station. They're the TV studio. They have four TVs out there that have four different news channels playing at all time. Because they have to know that. And you know what? Sometimes that's a lot on my brain and probably on their brains too. I think uh thinking about finding, sometimes thinking about having fun in a time like this is almost insane. It's a radical act. Right now, really, if for true, it's a radical act of resistance and reasserting your identity and personhood to have fun with friends. So here's the specific things, right? And phones is part of it. uh If the extractive powers that exist under the oppression that is capitalism and patriarchy, if they can keep us isolated inside, depressed and consuming, they win. going outside is amazing. Like connecting with friends. like playing a game playing games in person with friends. I don't care what games it could be. Tag. could be this game. A sister invented called, um, Volvo where you sit in a park, you sit, uh, facing the street and you just count Volvo's till you get to a hundred Volvos. I mean, this works in some cities. It doesn't work in all cities. work like at Alabama. Although, you know, so, but that sort of like, if you can, if you can get to be in connection with another human being playing a game who are defeating all four of that. Isolated inside, depressed and consuming. Yeah. Even this. Like, and that's the place where the technology like to have real time face to face, like we could play a game over Zoom. That's awesome. And that helps defeat the four horsemen of the oppressive extractive patriarchal capitalism. that is trying to crush us all down into like little, just little, get cracking your... You know? Yeah, it's like, it's freeing. And we don't even realize it is until we do it. You know? It seems like, oh, I don't want to spend my free time like playing a game. Like, it's almost just like this weird inner voice that I think a lot of people have. But then when you play, you're like, I'm actually having fun and I'm not as debilitatingly sad. and alone than before. even if it's, and a lot of the time people say they don't have enough people to play with, like even just playing Uno in the studio makes life a little bit better. And I like that. 100%. There was something I talked right over. were, you had a point. Was that the point? Cause in my, like- I don't know what my point was, but it was probably that. Okay, It was probably me talking about how it's- It is difficult, I think, for younger people to imagine having fun because it's almost like, how can I have fun in a time like this? Because we're being inundated with all of this news and negativity. it's like, it weighs on us mentally. But when we break free of that and we have fun, it's not saying these things aren't happening and these things aren't bad. Right. It's saying that as a human, I know my limits and I know that to be my best self and to be the best person that I can be for others, I have to have fun and I have to be around other people so that they can have fun and they can be better and that all of us can have fun and that's awesome. Yeah, there's a thing in, I did postpartum depression support counseling for 12 years and one of the things I said over and over to people coming through that program was that you have to fill up your own well. If you are pouring out constantly to care for other people around you, you're endlessly endlessly pouring out, you become so depleted. And I think that's part of what you're talking about. and I think that if more folks of any age could it could understand and like really take in that like having moments of light and joy and laughter and fun by themselves or with other people helps the world. You know that that's a thing to help the world if you feel better you're going to be more able to help your friend feel better. Yeah. Right and playing games is a great way to do that. Um, just if you're, and you're adding to the positive space in the world by, creating that space, you, and like, certainly it's not like a, like la la la, nothing that is happening, it's like just recognizing, I also have to do this, right? It's the bread and roses part, right? We have to do the work and we have to have the pleasure. Um, or what is life? Why are we here? What are we doing? I'm not here to work, pay taxes and die. I'm here to express my humanity in the fullest way possible and that includes playing games and hanging out and talking about design and thinking about art and all these other things. And being outside, right? That was a thing that when I was talking about you, it was like, oh yeah. I sat up because multiple times in the show, you know, type speaks, I've talked to designers and they're like, oh, my work is better when I go outside. And we don't think about that often because I know that when I'm like locked in on even off like a friend's, I'm doing a project for a friend. I'm like, I need to this done. I need to stay inside, get it done. But when I go outside and I like rest and I run around and I frolic perhaps, I have like my, my work becomes better because I'm, I'm like, I am letting myself, I'm feeding myself basically. I'm nourishing myself in my brain. Yes, because like we are, this is a thing that's been going on for 2000 years. We're not really evolutionarily like optimized for sitting still. No. And like if the more you're hammering your head against a design problem, the more you should get up and go for a walk, hopefully with a friend. and talk about stuff. And then your design problem will work it out. You don't have to climb mountains. You don't have to go trekking for weeks. just get up and walk around the block. And then say, here's what I'm thinking about. Here's what I'm talking about. What do you think about that? Buh-buh-buh-buh-buh-buh-buh. Oh, got it. And then you can go back and do the thing you need. Yeah, definitely. End of discussion is touch grass. uh I prefer hug tree, but that's just me. Hey, thanks for listening to Type Speaks. Hope you had a good time, because I sure did. But unfortunately, the episode is over. But don't worry, you can check us out in other places. Be sure to follow the show to listen to every new episode or listen back to some old ones. Check us out on Instagram at TypeSpeaksPod. And remember, always keep creating and always stay curious. I'll see you next time. I've been Rae. you uh you