Today’s post centers around 3 great questions asked by Stonemaier Ambassadors, along with my attempts to answer them. Let’s jump right in!
What is your relationship to other designers and publishers? Is it a competitive relationship?
I feel incredibly fortunate to be part of an industry that is widely one of mutual respect, collaboration, cooperation, and communication (which makes it all the more baffling on the very rare occasions when a publisher doesn’t act in that way, like if they try to publish a promo card for another publisher’s game or publicly denigrate another publisher with misinformation). I think the vast majority of publishers try to elevate each other–a rising tide lifts all boats.
I learn so much on a daily basis from other designers and publishers–they are peers, not competitors. No customer can buy every game, and even when they choose another publisher’s game over one of ours, the game is immersing them deeper into the hobby and potentially may increase the chances they’ll get one of our games in the future.
How can someone who is looking to completely change their career path be considered by potential employers despite their lack of experience?
I have a huge amount of empathy for someone who runs into the roadblock of “lack of experience” as they try to break into a new industry. If a company has several great candidates and one has direct experience while the others doesn’t, the candidate with experience has a distinct advantage.
However, a full-time job isn’t the only way to get the type of experience you can list on a resume. You can volunteer for companies you admire (or related organizations: if you aren’t finding volunteer opportunities with a publisher, you might find them at your local game store or a local convention). You can also seek contract work to get your foot in the door, or create your own opportunities (content, concept art, events, etc). The more you can learn directly so a potential employer can view you as someone who can hit the ground running, the better.
What do you think about board games as a topic of academic discourse?
I’m all for people exploring games as cerebrally as they wish. For those who enjoy cerebral/academic approaches to game design, I recommend the Decision Space podcast and Unboxed: Board Game Experience and Design by designer Gordon Calleja.
I also think it’s neat when someone chooses tabletop games as their thesis or research topic. However, there is a befuddling pattern to all interview requests I’ve received from academics: When I tell them that I’m happy to answer their questions in such a way that other people can hear the answers and participate in the discussion (i.e., they either post their questions in the comments of a public forum or we record our chat for one of us to post publicly), they all say that it goes against the rules of their university. I’m sure they have their reasons, but I really hope universities reconsider this approach.
I actually have 3 more interesting questions I’ll answer on Thursday. I’d love to hear your thoughts or follow-up questions about these!
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23 Comments on “3 Great Questions (and My Attempts to Answer Them)”
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Jamey,
I can lightly touch on number 2…while I certainly haven’t quit my day job, 14 years ago, I started doing pro bono work for several board game publishers. After two years, I had worked with a half-dozen companies and only at that point did I create an LLC and started doing the work in a more established manner. I’m reticent to say professional, because my work was always professional even when pro bono, but now I expected clients to actually provide commensurate compensation for the time and energy I dedicated to their work. Now, having done so for more than a decade, I’ve worked with more than a dozen publishers and have worked on 100+ titles from Euro to war games.
[…] this week I answered 3 great questions posted by Stonemaier Ambassadors. I actually had 6 total questions, but I got wordy in my […]
Academic looks at board games always interest me. From the way you answer this third question, it appears that you are unconcerned about contributing to the academic discourse. I’ve long appreciated your perspectives on the hobby, so I’m curious:
Do you believe academic approaches to game design have a real value for the hobby? Why or why not? Do you think it possible that you could be persuaded otherwise?
My own take is that there is much left to be explored about game design, and that academic perspectives have the potential to explore in unique ways, distinct from the ways designers and players tend to discuss.
People began farming and eating crops long before anyone took up academic perspectives on agriculture, but it seems that such perspectives have shown their worth. Is the difference here perhaps that food is essential and so academics are given more weight, whereas games are a luxury and so there’s no need to bother with academics?
If you do believe academic perspectives are of significant value here, have you asked the researchers the reasons behind the universities’ policies? Could learning what the policies are possibly persuade you to do an interview without posts you asked for? What if they published their research the same way Calleja did, available for purchase?
“it appears that you are unconcerned about contributing to the academic discourse”
Oh, that isn’t at all what I’m saying. I’m saying that I believe in making academic discourse public instead of private, generously sharing knowledge instead of selfishly withholding it. I say that in the post: “I’m happy to answer their questions in such a way that other people can hear the answers and participate in the discussion”.
I’m sorry, I could have worded things better.
What I meant was that it appears that making concessions to the universities’ policies does not seem to you to be worth the value gained by furthering the academic research. You value a strong emphasis on open access discourse and do not want to sacrifice this for the sake of the researchers’ purposes. Is this correct?
I think I’m also having a hard time envisioning what it looks like for academic research to be available for “other people [to] hear the answers and participate in the discussion.” Universities regularly have scholars give talks about their research, but usually not before they’ve actually done most of the leg work. Interviews would constitute part of the leg work / raw data, I would assume, and so necessarily come before discussion with the public.
It would be incredibly easy. Here’s how it would look:
1. An academic contacts me to asks if they can ask me some questions. I say yes, if the questions and answers can be posted publicly.
2. If the interview is done over a Zoom-style chat, I would record it and post it on my YouTube channel. If the interview is done over email, I could post the questions and answers on this blog. If they just have a few questions, they could ask over email up front and I could point them in the right direction, sharing links to articles on those topics that they can read (and, if they have further questions, could ask in the comments of those articles).
Basically, the academic would act in the same spirit of generosity of information (and the willingness to do even a small amount of research into the information I’ve already made public) exhibited by anyone else in the world who asks questions publicly instead of privately.
Thank you. I was assuming that researchers were interested in something other than what you’ve addressed in you blogs, videos, etc. It’s hard to understand what they’re looking for without knowing the details of their research. They must be doing something different from what I would be interested in.
Given the sheer amount of posts I’ve made on a variety of topics over the last 11 years, I’m guessing there is a very good chance that I’ve covered the topics they were looking to explore. I’m always happy to point people in the right direction, but I don’t do private consultation, and that’s essentially what every academic has mandated. Hopefully universities will update these restrictive policies to better fit the modern age.
Academic research has very strict rules they have to follow, particularly as it pertains to collecting information and data from human beings. As a general rule, it has to be sanitized and anonymized before it can be released to the public to protect those who have contributed. While you may be willing to release it publicly, and even prefer it, this isn’t likely to change any time soon. The standards were put into place to ensure that all academics adhere to similar ethical standards when dealing with data and people, and are often in response to what we would now consider less ethical methods in the past. I appreciate you wanting to make your responses public, but if you want to have your data included in the academic discourse, you are likely going to have to be willing to participate within the ethical framework laid out by the university (which is generally guided by an ethics committee based on an even larger governing body), which generally means the data can’t be released in the way you want.
Do you think those rules still make sense in 2023? That a consensual interview couldn’t be released publicly? I don’t need protection from the information I have and enjoy sharing with others.
Honestly I think they make more sense in 2023, in an age of doxxing and internet trolls. It’s far too easy to get hold of people’s personal information these days. It would also be really easy for a researcher to put pressure on someone who preferred to remain anonymous by pointing out that other publishers had chosen to do a public interview. If they then give in to the public forum, did they do it because they really consented? Or because the researcher pointed out that Stonemaier Games agreed to public dissemination, so they should too? It can quickly become an ethical issue. It’s always better to err on the side of being too ethical, than being too lax with your ethics.
But it isn’t just to protect the users, it’s also to help prevent bias creeping into the studies. I don’t know how far you got in the process of discussion with these academics but it wouldn’t surprise me if what many of them wanted to do was to send you a link to an anonymous survey. The data ends up completely anonymous to help prevent bias in the collection and analysis process, in addition to protecting the identities of the subjects. If they know you sent them the information about something and you’re their favorite game designer, then they are more likely to give your answers weight, even unconsciously. Similarly, people are more likely to give weight to people who identify themselves versus those who remain anonymous.
I do think too much academic information ends up behind paywalls. But there is starting to be pushback on that from academic communities, with some abandoning traditional publishers to create their own open access journals. So hopefully that element of the research process will be changing soon.
That’s fair. I think the other side of ethics is the inequity of information this method creates. That’s my struggle with it. I hear your perspective, but the same could be said for ANY interview; just as that doesn’t justify anyone pressuring someone to do have a public chat, it also doesn’t justify a special exception for universities.
For the type of request I’m mentioning here, they’re all requests for interviews, not for anonymous surveys. I’ve filled out a few anonymous surveys for academic studies, and I have no issue with that (I don’t do them if they take an hour, but most are just 5-10 minutes).
“When I tell them that I’m happy to answer their questions in such a way that other people can hear the answers and participate in the discussion… they all say that it goes against the rules of their university.”
I’m surprised that you get this response from every person asking you questions as part of their academic research. I suspect that some of them are trying to avoid cooperating with people they see as rival researchers. I think that they could learn from your approach to other boardgame publishers. Of course, some universities are very particular about the learning they tolerate.
Actually it’s far more likely to be that their universities ethics committee won’t allow them to release the data publicly in this way.
Jamey – great response to question 2.
Having joined an organised gaming group this year that runs regular public events, and having recently attended my first major games convention, I can definitely see the great opportunities for volunteering in this industry that introduce you to a wide range of people, publishers, organisers, all with the same passion for tabletop games.
I’ve also always loved the written word from a very young age – both reading and writing, so the idea of proofreading, preparing quick to learn/step by step guides to games, and play testing these to make sure the rules match the game – is also very appealing, as is writing Blogs or Vlogs to share your love for the industry and welcome new people to this world of games.
The mantra that I’ve been trying to get across to my 3 teenage daughters, who are now thinking about careers beyond school, is to follow your passion/do something you love doing/are interested in – regardless of what it pays/what opportunities are out there – so that you don’t end up in a career you dislike and spend years grinding at it to pay the bills.
Advice I wished I’d received at school many years ago. But you’re never too young to try something different 🙂
Thanks Stuart! I think it’s great that you’re proactively expanding your experience, and I like the advice you’re imparting upon your daughters.
Concerning the first question: I can give some examples from the SPIEL convention this last weekend, to show how friendly publishers can be with each other.
First of all: sharing the Stonemaier booth with Inside Up Games was really great. We not only shared space, but at some point we shared people, and we shared experiences and ideas. And not in the least: we shared pizza. :-) It was a great experience, and there was a nice camaraderie.
Second: I have been spending a lot of my booth time on showing and explaining the Wingspan Fan Art Cards. One of the most heard questions on this German convention was: “Haben Sie es auch auf Deutsch?” — Do you also have it in German? At the start of the convention, we didn’t have the answer to this yet, but we told people to ask Feuerland, the German publisher. After a while, Feuerland came over to us to tell us they had decided to translate and publish the pack. From then on, we told all German customers who had a German base game that it would be better to wait for the German game. That’s less sales for Stonemaier and more for Feuerland, but it’s in the best interest of the customer, and being honest about those things works best. Customers were very grateful and left the Stonemaier booth with a good feeling. They will remember this. I loved to be part of this collaboration—not competition—between publishers.
Thank you so much for sharing these excellent examples, Karel! And thank you for helping out so much at the Essen booth. :)
From the perspective at the InsideUp Games booth, we enjoyed the time spent and the space shared. We were able to help alleviate the lines of customers for each other as well as answer customer questions. They could shop for games from both companies and only have to check out once. The collaboration was great!
Thanks Sara! I’m glad the two teams were able to help each other.
At my state university, we had an undergraduate research program that had its undergrad research fair in the Spring, where the public was invited to come and listen and participate when the Q&A part happened at the end of each presentation. I suspect that my university can’t be the only one that uses that format, but I may be wrong.
That’s great, Jonathan! Did they allow the Q&A to be recorded and posted publicly?
Yes, they allowed video recording of the presentations and Q&A sessions. However, uploading of research lectures was only just starting to become a thing, and I think I only saw MIT, Oxford, and University of Nottingham paving the way at the time.
I was in a research project one year, though, that had been given the option to published a paper with interviews in either YouTube or Wikimedia format, with comments section open for feedback. With hindsight, the YT option would have been the better format, but it was still a new thing that a lot of people didn’t know what to do with.
Unfortunately, my group voted and the wiki format won by majority, of which universities were not known for having a presence on back then nor for publishing scholarly material that way, for that matter. However, the paper is still up on the wiki media page we made, and I can put a link on my CV if I absolutely have to. ;)