Who knew?

June 2015

When he introduced himself as a game designer

I pictured video game coding

Even as I began to understand he meant physical, tabletop board games

I pictured him as the one doing artwork and graphics

But no, he was the mastermind behind the strategy and balance

So he dated artists

A year later he was dating me

August 2016

Games and Stories

The two things he could talk about forever

So together we made a game for telling stories

He hired me to design a custom font and hand-drawn prototype cards

Which we gifted to a mutual friend (I wonder if she still has them)

Who knew that “Tales of the Commonfolk” was just the beginning

Of a lifelong partnership?

December 2016

He likes to say he hired me with a ring

It wasn’t for my artistic abilities—

Who knew my business experience would find me my husband?

I introduced him to the strategy behind creative businesses like his games

And he caught on immediately

It’s all a game after all

Whether you’re playing the room or playing with numbers

January 2025

Ten years, four children, and more than one near-death-experience later

We are here again

Doing what we were brought together to do

Working hard side by side

Passing the project between us as it grows and develops

Making it better than either of us could make it alone

Making something no one else in the world can make

Interview with Paul Aspen, Head of Gamification at Modern Agora

Paul, creative people tend to have a lot of ideas and I guess you’re no different. How many ideas for different games have you collected?

I think I have around 200 in my master list that I’ve fleshed out past the basic idea stage. If I got no new ideas, I could release one every quarter and have to work into my 80’s, so ideas are not what I view as a finite resource!

I’ve learned to measure the game ideas I get every day in terms of how long-lasting the energy they provide is: When I add them to the list, does it feel like copying notes over or does the whole idea take flight under my fingertips as I type? Do people pop into my head who’d love to play it, or is it just a whimsy?

Tell us more about how you choose which games to develop and make playable.

Because I’m so prolific I have a very strict two-part qualification for which games I sink my focus time into:

First, it must possess viability. That means there needs to be a path to access an interested, qualified audience. This is the hard one, but it’s very important to keep in mind. You can sink months of time into a game nobody’s interested in very, very easily just like any other creative project.

Second, it must have utility. Beyond making enough money to cover the expense—and time—it took to create, it needs to advance my purposes. I make small games for my kids all the time just to practice my craft and experiment and occupy their mental energy, but I’ve made others which are educational for my students back when I was a schoolteacher or tools for connecting adults together in a way that deepens important relationships.

Utility is vital because if you are just worried about viability your soul and creativity and drive will ebb. Viability is a gift that ensures you stay connected with your industry, even more than paying the bills or “paying off” yourself.

What is your one goal—mission even—when it comes to your games? What is the one thing you want people to gain from what you design?

Connection. Human to human, brain to brain, heart to heart. I was on my way to being a professional esports candidate, living with several roommates and returning from work just to fire up the screen and perfect my passion.

But the passion I had, and the freedom to finally choose to do for hours and hours what was exciting to me in my post-college profligacy, was empty. I hit my goal and... quit playing. I was disappointed at the emptiness of hitting the rank I’d studied and worked hard for on the big leaderboards.

I spent the rest of the night playing a totally different game, a slow-paced simulation that let my mind wander. A soft RPG that put me in the shoes of a hero of history I’d never heard of, someone who fought hard for their homeland even though it was small as to be insignificant on the grand stage.

There I froze. The hero had, through events, become “ambitious” which it defined as working hard to get what you want. That was what I thought I was, but what is it really if you’re working hard but don’t really know what you want?

In the introspection that followed that evening, I realized I was deeply, profoundly lonely. I was as free as a coconut on the high seas, able to move anywhere but isolated and unhappy.

I knew I loved games, so I made my first board game that week and showed it to a few friends. After two hours and three or four full games full of laughter and faux rage, I popped the question: What do you all think?

One turned to me and said, “You should make this. For real.” And I realized I could. I’d played games with these people strictly for fun and entertainment for years, but the light in their faces and genuine connection that was happening made it clear that I had a gift.

And most importantly, it felt to me like letting out a lifelong pent-up breath. I could make games forever, and was willing to work hard to make it happen.

I love the entertainment factor, but it’s the strange intimacy and sportsmanship and warmth of gathering at a table together to pit your craftiness and planning skills against each other or a challenging puzzle together that brings me back to games.

Genuine connection is the beating heart I pursue with every design. How will this help people gather and feel less alone? How will it help people see each other, or new sides of old friends? How will families gather around the table to play it? Can they introduce someone new easily without any extra fuss?

It’s all about how we connect.

What part of the process is the most tedious? Is there something you would outsource if you could?

Oh my goodness yes. The most tedious part is the list-building. I love connecting with people, but managing them and running a newsletter or social feed is just NOT my gig. I could talk for hours, but one-way communication sucks. It makes me feel even more lonely than just being by myself.

In this fast-paced, high-dopamine world, each game has to have its own list built, and it always feels so frustrating to me to be playing (hah!) a numbers game to achieve viability.

It makes me feel very inauthentic to treat people as drops in a bucket, but you need to be able to wear that hat to run a successful business. I just can’t wait to take that hat off when I do have to put it on.

Let’s talk numbers. What does it take to create a game? What kinds of costs go into development and production?

That’s too open-ended; games have as much variety as physical products at large do.

One of my favorites, Las Vegas by Rudiger Dorn, is literally just some mass-produced cheap dice and a few simple cards. I don’t know the numbers behind it, but it had to be hugely profitable for him and his publishers.

Other games have complex parts, tons of miniatures that you can paint, or intricate and sensitive pieces or art booklets.

If you ask most game designers, art is the biggest obstacle. Good art is required and is the heart of the game. Players will be looking at the art long after the mechanics are ingrained in their minds. A good piece of art for a card is costly, and then you also have to have a good graphic designer to make that art neither be subsumed nor lose the mechanical elements on the card.

But that’s because most designers do the synthesis themselves. Synthesizing an experience into mechanics requires a special mind. A designer can find a compatible artist much more easily than an artist can find a skilled designer to catch their vision.

I tell people to plan to invest or raise $10K to develop their game. That’s a general ballpark for an average viable game of everything from printing and shipping to the art and graphic design, and might include some travel expenses to go showing it around at different conventions.

There are professional playtesters too who can really help out, and of course marketing and advertising can be money wisely spent too. As always, the simpler you keep it the better. Good games are complex in the playing, not the setting up and storage!

How do you find people to partner with, whether it’s playtesting your games, promoting them, or hiring you to design a game for their business?`

Talk about your game in public. Headhunt people with similar audiences and turn competitors into collaborators. Some will find you, some you’ll get told about and go hunt down. The best hires in the game industry don’t come out of any college, they come from volunteer pools that are committed to a quality product and serving people just like them.

Another good thing is to be out of place. Don’t just go to game-related events; be the game designer at a business convention. You’ll have people very excited because you’re not being childish about someone else’s passion.

How does it feel when you see someone playing your game?

This might sound wrong, but it’s the same type of feeling as having someone nervously come up and ask to hold your baby. It’s a strange feeling, as a parent, to hand a near-stranger something you’ve lost sleep over in your tender care for it.

You want their approval, but you’re zeroed in on their authenticity. What are they looking at? What made them say “Oooh” just now? Are they having a good time?

It’s exciting. It reminds me of the scientific study that proved fear and excitement are literally the same chemical reaction in your body. Which you feel depends on your frame of mind and personal energy levels, and how ready you are to embrace the results.

What has been one of the biggest lessons you’ve taken away from your experiences as a Tabletop Game Designer?

Don’t be afraid to kill your darlings. Sometimes you need to approach an idea from another angle or inject something new—or remove a thorny piece—to move forward. The days and weeks can slip away.

I try to work on at least two projects simultaneously so that I can have some distance to find a way past obstacles without getting off schedule. With only one... it’s easy to feel trapped in a dysfunction or get overly attached to a creative element. With two, each can inspire you to take the other to new heights.

It’s not about how many games you make, but which ones are good. To that end, you need to make a lot for so so so many reasons. Plus if you have more games than you know what to do with, you can easily contribute and collaborate without worrying about “losing” because, well, you have plenty more where that came from.

The scarlet thread here is don’t be afraid. Do cool stuff. Don’t be precious about anything, but be free with it and be public about it. Don’t set your light under a bushel, as the Good Book says.

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