Interview with Kevin Wilson by zombiemonkey

Kevin Wilson is a hugely successful game designer at Fantasy Flight Games. Among his original designs such as Runebound, Descent: Journeys in the Dark and Magdar are several titles based on popular video and computer games. Kevin graciously took time out of his busy schedule to speak to Jason M. Brown in relation to Fantasy Flight’s massively popular range of games licensed from popular electronic franchises.

What products, currently available from your company, are based on computer or video games? Do you have any more planned? Would you say that these games are a large part of your popularity as a games publisher?

Currently we have Warcraft: the Board Game and its expansion, Doom: the Board Game and its expansion, and World of Warcraft: the Board Game. We have an expansion for World of Warcraft in the pipeline, and I’m currently designing Starcraft: the Board Game as well. As for whether these games are a large part of our popularity, I would say that they certainly helped get us noticed, and they continue to draw in an audience that we wouldn’t otherwise be able to reach.

What has been the most successful video/computer game related product that you have released so far (in sales terms)? Why do you think that this particular product has been the most successful?

In sales terms, I’d say Doom and World of Warcraft have been our biggest hits. I think this was partly due to the fact that we were unable to put plastic pieces in Warcraft, though. It was our first attempt at a video game conversion, and we just didn’t have the manufacturing capacity in place yet.

What do you think has been the most successful of your products from a design point of view? What are the biggest challenges facing a designer that takes on the task of translating a video/computer game into a board game?

Personally, my favorite video game conversion so far is Doom. It uses special colored dice that determine whether or not your weapon hits as well as the damage it does all in one roll. It was an important innovation for the game because it helped keep things moving faster. Any delays in game play are largely due to the marines talking about their strategies or making decisions. In fact, the game system was so successful that we did another game using the same system. That one’s called Descent: Journeys in the Dark, and it’s a fantasy dungeon-crawling game. (No relation to the video game Descent).

I’d say the biggest challenge in converting a video game to a board game is understanding that if you convert the video game entirely over, you’re going to fail. You’ll wind up with a slow, kludgy board game that people will look at and say, “This is way too fiddly for a board game. It might make a terrific video game, though.” You have to streamline some things, abstract some things, and concentrate on converting over the things that made the video game so great in the first place.

Also, you have to remember that you don’t have animations or sound effects to fall back on. Your game has to be exciting on a more tactile level, with 3D game pieces and face-to-face game play.

What kind of video/computer games do you think are most suitable for the transition from screen to table? Are there any particular genres that you think are ideal for this transition?

I don’t really think any one video game genre is best suited for conversion to board game form. However, I think it’s important for someone doing a conversion to look at the genre’s strengths and determine just what it is that makes that genre fun. For example, are computer role-playing games fun because you level your characters up and gain new abilities, or because there’s a detailed story to follow, or are they fun because of the feeling of exploration and discovery? It could be a combination of these things, but it’s important to at least examine the issue before you begin.

Personally, I think even video game designers could benefit from stepping back and taking another look at the concept of “fun” vs. “challenging”. There have been a number of video games that I’ve played where you eventually get bogged down in some tedious task or mission and I have to wonder, “Okay, who thought this part of the game was FUN?” In board game design, I always look at the “game ritual” – the activity or activities that players spend most of their time doing over and over again, and I try to make sure that part of the game is as fun as I can make it.

Are there any video/computer games that are currently not available as board games that you would like to try transforming into board or card game form? Are there any that have been released by other publishers that you would have liked to design yourself?

I can’t speak for Fantasy Flight Games, of course, but I personally would love to take a crack at some of the games I love to play, such as GTA3, Katamari Damacy, Final Fantasy, Dragon Quest VIII, or City of Heroes. I especially love tackling new genres and new design challenges. It keeps my job interesting and exciting.

As for games that I wish I could’ve designed, the only one that really springs to mind is Sid Meier’s Civilization. Not that there’s anything wrong with the current version, just that I would love to try and adapt a game that I’ve spent so many hours playing.

Do you think that these games appeal purely to people familiar with the game in its original form or do you think that the general board game audience that is unfamiliar with the video/computer game are also interested in these games? Do you think that familiarity with the original property is necessary?

I think that licenses provide a sales hook for a game, but that each game ultimately has to stand on its own merits. Certainly, every license has its super fanboys, who will buy anything and everything associated with it, but if you want the broadest possible appeal, you need to take a great license and make a great game with it. If you take a great license and just make a so-so game, then you’re wasting the potential of the license, and there are only so many opportunities out there.

How well do the licensed video/computer game adaptations fit alongside your non-licensed or non-video/computer related products? Would you say that you treat these adaptations any differently to an original product? Do you think that the average consumer treats these products any differently?

I feel the licensed games complement our product line-up very nicely. They allow us to expand our audience and our output without cannibalizing our own market. Better yet, we get a small number of fans who come for the license, but stay for the design. Those fans then branch out and try our other games.

Mind you, the design process for a licensed product is harder than an original product. There are continuity issues to watch, and you’re working with something that is near and dear to a lot of peoples’ hearts – you don’t want to depart so far from the license that you anger those folks.

As for whether or not consumers treat licensed products differently, that’s certainly true. The product is always looked at through a filter of “How much did I like the video game this is based on?” People who didn’t like the video game are really unlikely to buy or even try a board game based off of it, so it’s important to choose licenses that appeal to a lot of people.

Do you think that the success that retro games currently enjoy could carry over into the board game industry? Do you think, for example, that we could see board or card games based on such classic and enduring titles as Pac-Man, Space Invaders or Gauntlet, given their continuing popularity? Is that something that you can envision Fantasy Flight being involved in?

It’s hard to say. There are certainly some grand old video games that I’d be delighted to turn into board games, such as Zork or Pac Man, but it’s difficult to know if the market is there. It wouldn’t surprise me if FFG eventually takes a stab at one of them, although I’m not aware of any current plans to do so.

Finally, would you class yourself as an avid player of video or computer games? What are your favourite video/computer games? Much like the ‘unfilmable book’ syndrome facing film-makers, are there any games that you absolutely adore but feel would not translate well at all into board or card game form?

I’d say I’m pretty avid, yeah. Although I’m probably a bit old school since I had a lot more time for video games back when I was in school. Let’s just say that I played a LOT of text adventures. Still, I own a PS2 and a PC, and both of them get used for gaming pretty regularly even today.

My favorite video games need to be divided into two stacks – all-time favorites and current favorites. Some of my all-time favorites are: Ultima IV, Trinity, A Mind Forever Voyaging, Spider and Web (a free text adventure you can find on the internet), Loom, Sam and Max Hit the Road, the Wild Arms series, and pretty much all of the Final Fantasy games, including and especially Tactics. There are many others, but that’s the short list.

My current favorites will probably be more familiar to most folks – Guitar Hero, Dragon Quest VIII, the GTA3 series, and of course, Starcraft. As you can see, I mostly play CRPGs, but I dabble in the other genres as well.

If there are any ‘unfilmable books’ out there in the video game genre, it would have to be games like Guitar Hero that use a special controller or otherwise take such specific advantage of their medium that it would be extremely difficult to convert them over. I mean, I love Guitar Hero, but I have no idea how I’d turn it into a great board game.

In any event, thanks for the interview, Jason! But before I go I’d like to thank all of the fans who have made Fantasy Flight Games (and myself, incidentally) so successful. You guys rock!

No problem at all – thank you Kevin!

Zapp Zerapp Review by Jabberwock

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This is another lovely ‘wooden bits’ game from Zoch (who also brought you Chicken Cha Cha Cha and Gulo Gulo). It has come to my attention that Zoch seem to delight in wonderful gameplay, lovely pieces and rather bemusing themes (and to prove my point, we have wolverines trying to rescue a wolverine baby by stealing eggs, and chickens running around pulling each other’s tail feather out). And Zap Zerapp is no exception.

“The most powerful Mages in the world every 13 years determine the best of their kind; the Madness Kegs are shaken in order to gain access to the foot of the mountain. At the moment the Kegs are shaken, the Magic Apprentices must run or the Devil wil arrive to send them away when the curse returns.”

No, it doesn’t make any sense to me either…

Each player has three dobbers (the so-called Apprentices), large coloured pawns that are placed on their home city. Your goal is to make it safely all the way round the mountain, and back to a holding place just opposite your home city. The ‘Madness Kegs’ are placed in the centre of the circular track. The kegs are green wooden tubs with between 1 and 13 little lead pellets inside them. There is a number on the bottom of each keg denoting how many pellets are inside.

Each turn, one player rolls the dice (two six-siders), and everyone then makes a grab for the kegs…

What you are trying to achieve is a keg with a number as close to the rolled value as possible without going over. If you end up with a keg of a higher value than the number rolled, you stay put. If you get a keg of a lower value, you move one of your pawns that number of spaces.

So each turn everyone has the same chance to move as far as possible, but you have to be quick, as the only methods you have of finding the right keg are by sound and weight, so everyone starts to frantically pick up kegs (only one at a time allowed – sit on your other hand) and shake them close their ears, trying to find that elusive value equal to the number rolled, or playing it safe and settling for the ‘1’ keg each time…

Once everyone has selected their keg, they’re all turned over to read the value on the bottom, and movement takes place (or doesn’t, accordingly).

Note that there are 13 kegs, so one of them (the ‘13’ one) will always be invalid, making this a very tricky and fun game to play, as you are never quite sure whether you are safe or not. And if someone should roll snake eyes, it is a very frantic race to find the one and two kegs before anyone else bags them, leaving you unable to move that turn.

There are some other rules, but these are minor, and only add some tactical considerations that make the game worth playing (and thus are very unimportant!). The main fun comes from searching for the ‘right’ keg for your move (which may not be the highest value, if you don’t want to move that far).

The game is great fun to play, and always ends with laughter from the players, as they snatch kegs from under the hands of other players, or push hands out of the way to get to the one they want. And because it is so simple to learn, it is accessible by pretty much anyone, and everyone can have fun with it.

Summary

Presentation: The pawns and kegs are big, solid and wooden. They look and feel great. The pellets are just big enough to make each keg feel and sound different, making the game playable, and the board (with art from my favourite game artist Doris Matthäus) is very clear, lively and functional. 9.1/10

Clarity of Rules: Well, I can’t give high marks here, as the game only comes with German instructions, and I have had to use an internet translator to decipher how to play. The rules are very simple anyway, and there are some clear pistures and examples given in the booklet. Learning to play isn’t a problem, but it would have been nice to have English rules, as Zoch have done in their other games. 6.6/10

Game Length: With each player having the opportunity to send their opponents back to their home city, games can drag on a while, and the middle-game (once the novelty of shaking the kegs has worn off, and nobody looks close to winning) seems almost interminable. However, the endgame is always close and exciting, and things generally reach a ‘critical mass’ of everyone very close to winning at roughly the same time. 8.3/10

Value: Athe fun of the game (especially for youngsters) is immense, and the bits and pieces increase the worth of the game even more. Zoch do a grand job coming up with original, fun and great-looking games, and I find Zap Zerapp to be one of their best. 8.9/10

Overall: Zap Zerapp cannot be considered a thinking person’s game. It’s all about feel and sound. Finding the right keg for you is tricky, and often you will not be able to mive your ‘Apprentice’ around the ‘Solitary Mountain of Impossibility’ to escape from the Devil and show you are the best. But the sheer enjoyment of watching everyone shaking kegs klike crazy, while hoping that they get the right number, and not get sent back home is one you will not forget for a while. There is strategy here too, and this makes the game worth playing by adults as well as children. A light, fun diversion for all the family. 8.6/10 (not an average)