Interviews by an Optimist # 62 -

Mike Selinker

Mike Selinker is hovering somewhere between the stages of wunderkind game designer and grand old man of gaming. Over the past two decades, he's helped design games for Dungeons & Dragons, Magic: The Gathering, Risk, Axis & Allies, BattleTech, and dozens of other lines. After eight years helping to launch trading card game and role-playing lines at Wizards of the Coast, Mike led the revival of the storied Avalon Hill game line in 2004, including the revision of Axis & Allies for the first time in 18 years and development of such popular board games as Risk Godstorm and Betrayal at House on the Hill.

Last year, after resigning from Wizards, Mike formed the game design studio Lone Shark Games with Cheapass Games president James Ernest. The two hit it big right off the bat with Pirates of the Spanish Main for Wiz Kids, and are now seeing their games and books released by major companies. This fall will see the arrival of Gloria Mundi from Rio Grande, The Art of Texas Hold 'Em from Eagle Games, and Dungeonville from Z-Man Games. He's also looking forward to the release of Key Largo from Tilsit Editions, the last board game by the late Pirate's Cove designer Paul Randles, which Mike developed with Bruno Faidutti.

Mike spoke to us from his home in Seattle.

Tom Vasel: Working at Avalon Hill seems like it would be a dream job! Why did you leave?

Mike Selinker: Yeah, when they hand you Risk and Axis & Allies, and say, "Do something cool with these," things are pretty good. But I'd been at that company for eight years and had worked on nearly everything they'd ever made. There were a lot of things Wizards didn't or couldn't do, and a lot of people I hadn't worked with. It seemed a good time to go out on top.

Tom Vasel: So things went downhill after Wizards of the Coast acquired Avalon Hill?

Mike Selinker: Hey, I thought you were an optimist, Tom. Wizards was--I'm sorry, is--great for Avalon Hill. It resettled the company back in the hobby where it belonged. Plus, it got Axis & Allies into Wizards, who (I say with some bias) did really good things with it. And it was pretty good for me too. I just got handed three Origins awards earlier this month, two for games I developed for Avalon Hill (Axis & Allies D-Day and Betrayal at House on the Hill). But the third was for Pirates of the Spanish Main, which I couldn't have helped design if I stayed at Wizards.

Tom Vasel: Exactly how is Lone Shark Studios associated with Cheapass Games?

Mike Selinker: Lone Shark is a business unit of Cheapass. Basically, it's me and James and our friend Tyler Bielman and other people we bring in to make games for other companies (as opposed to Cheapass). We've now done about 30 game design projects in a year and a half. Some of it is consulting, some is event design, and a lot of it is board, card, and trading card games. It's a good business model for us, because both of us are pretty well known, but to different people. Sometimes people call James, and sometimes they call me.

Tom Vasel: Can you tell us about some of these projects?

Mike Selinker: There's been a lot of talk about Gloria Mundi, which is our first game for Rio Grande Games. I've known Rio's owner, Jay Tummelson, for twenty years, so it was natural that our first big German-style board game would be for him. The name Gloria Mundi comes from the Latin maxim "sic transit Gloria mundi," which means "so passes the glory of the world." So it's about the onset of the last days of Rome, where the Goth hordes have come over the hill and everybody has to get out of Rome before everything they own is salted under like Carthage. It's a game about managing your resources before they are unceremoniously ripped out from under you.

Tom Vasel: Is this a game that is solely being produced by Rio Grande or is there a co-European publisher?

Mike Selinker: Rio's taking a big step in publishing its own big-box games. I'm pretty thrilled that ours is going to be the first.

Tom Vasel: That is pretty neat! How do you go about getting game companies to look at your games?

Mike Selinker: They all know us by now, I think. I carry around a briefcase full of games at each convention. When we started out about 18 months ago, game company presidents would say, "Oh, you have a briefcase? Sure, I guess I could look." Then it became, "What's in the briefcase this week, Mike?" Now it's just, "11:30?" Everybody who wants games knows I've usually got something fun to play in the box.

Of course, sometimes companies call with needs that we can fill. One of the great things about how we work is that if doesn't work out, we can often fill another company's needs with what we come up with. For example, Dungeonville had an interesting path to publication. I was showing around a game called Treasure Hunt, which my late friend Paul Randles designed and Bruno Faidutti and I developed. The game was about deep sea diving for treasure.

A well-known company said, "We'd like that, but could you convert it to a dungeon game?" I said no, this is a deep sea diving game, but I would create a new dungeoneering game for them. Turns out that they didn't want the new game, but Zev Shlasinger at Z-Man Games did, so now they've got it. So Treasure Hunt became Key Largo, and it's coming out soon from Tilsit Editions, and Dungeonville's coming out soon from Z-Man. So everybody wins. At Wizards, an idea like that would have been shelved forever if the team that requested it didn't like it. Now these games always seem to find good homes, and that's a definite improvement in my life.

Tom Vasel: Can you tell us about the design process for a game, say for example, Dungeonville? How much time goes into it?

Mike Selinker: A game usually stays in the Lone Shark Studio--on the Front Burner, we call it--for about 3-6 months before it sees the outside world. So in the case of Dungeonville, I came up with the idea of a card game with mad wizards luring adventurers into their mad dungeons, and kicked around a problematic version of it for a month or so. Then James figured out what was wrong with it and built a new central mechanic that did what I wanted much better than the mess I had. Falko Goettsch and I came up with the dungeon names and James named all the adventurers, and then John Kovalic came on board to do the incredibly funny art. All that took place over a year or so, and now Z-Man has it off to the presses.

Tom Vasel: When desigining Axis and Allies: Revised, how much was your work, and how much was Larry Harris's?

Mike Selinker: Every idea was initially Larry's, and then I worked with him from those initial ideas. He had a strong pent-up desire to revise a lot of things, and it was my job to make sure we were going far enough but not too far. I think we hit a pretty good balance. But anyway, the way to think about it is, the game could have come out just fine if I didn't work on it at all. It could not have come out at all if Larry didn't work on it.

Tom Vasel: Do you like editing games like that more, or designing them from scratch? What are the pros and cons to each?

Mike Selinker: I'm an omnivore, and I don't want to give up any part of my diet. I like being Mr. Fix-It, figuring out what's wrong with a game and what could be made better. That's development, and it's very satisfying. I look at a game like Betrayal at House on the Hill and think, "That was great when it got to me. And it got even better after I got involved with it." But I come up with a lot of ideas on my own, and I want to see them grow too. Sometimes it takes somebody else to make those ideas into everything they need to be.

The cons to both are exactly the same, just depending on who's saying it. When there's just one designer and no developers, all the credit and blame goes to one person. But when there's multiple people and multiple stages, somebody can feel like their work was destroyed by the person down the chain. I've been on both ends of that, and it's no fun either way.

Tom Vasel: When designing a game, do you ever get sick of it, since you're working on it so much?

Mike Selinker: I tend to go the other way--I'm pretty happy with a game as long as it's in need of help, where something's still wrong with it. Once it's good, then I lose interest quickly. I completely empathize with basketball coach Larry Brown: I love a game as long as it needs my help, but once it's at the point where people might call it solid, I've got one eye out for the next reclamation project. I think that's why I've worked on many different games, and why no one thinks of me as "the D&D guy" or "the Pirates guy." I guess I'd like to make a classic that I'm always known for, like Larry is with Axis & Allies, but I might not have the patience to get that kind of rep.

Tom Vasel: When you were designing Axis and Allies: Revised, you posted a series of articles at the Avalon Hill website, detailing the changes. What was the reaction to these articles, and would you do it again?

Mike Selinker: I think it sparked a lot of interest, so yes, I'd do it again. The Avalon Hill forums for Axis & Allies weren't all that active before I started doing that, but people heard about the articles and the debates those articles triggered. So many more people joined the site, and thus the Avalon Hill community. It's a pretty cheap form of publicity, so I often wonder why other companies don't do it.

Tom Vasel: What change to the 2004 edition of A & A did you get the most feedback on?

Mike Selinker: People are still writing reams of optional rules for everything from submarines to 1-defense infantry to victory conditions. I don't begrudge anybody that. It's nice to see people care that passionately about it. Based on feedback, there are some things I'd love to change, but that's up to Larry Harris and the next developer of A&A, assuming there is one. I expect the game to keep evolving. It's what keeps a game vital.

Tom Vasel: Of all the games you've designed or worked on, which are you most proud of?

Mike Selinker: I'm usually proudest of the smallest things, like the word game AlphaBlitz. That's a game that sprung fully formed from my head, and it was good from the word go. I also like the obscure projects I've done, like the Marvel Super Heroes Adventure Game supplement called the Reed Richards Guide to Everything. It was an absolute treat pretending to be Mr. Fantastic as he wrote a science column for young readers. A sample:
Cassie, age 8: "Why does my baby brother look like a hairy little monkey?" Dr. Richards: "Basically because ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny, Cassie."

Of the big ones, I loved working on Axis & Allies Revised, the D&D revision, Betrayal, and Pirates probably most of all. In a year, though, I could be saying very similar things about Gloria Mundi, Key Largo, and everything else we're doing now.

Tom Vasel: Besides games, you've had a hand with books. Can you tell us a little about that?

Mike Selinker: I eventually had to come to a definition of what a "book" is. I mean, I've done some or all of a couple dozen roleplaying books and puzzle books, but those don't seem like books to a lot of people. They've got covers and words and ISBNs, but they don't get called books. I eventually decided that a book was something I needed my agent to arrange.

And so we've got a couple of those out now, and they're about poker. The first is called Dealer's Choice: The Complete Handbook of Saturday Night Poker, co-written with James and Phil Foglio. That's got everything you need to know about playing over 200 different poker games, about 100 of which no one's ever seen before. It's pretty darn funny, I think. That just came out from Overlook Press and can be gotten from the Cheapass site, Studio Foglio, or Amazon and the like.

The next one, which is out next month from Eagle Games, is a bit more serious. It's called The Art of Texas Hold 'Em, and it's a strategy guide that focuses on game theory or other habits of highly evolved poker players. We're game designers, so we apply the same thought patterns we'd put into a game of Carcassone to poker. Except, y'know, for the money thing.

Tom Vasel: What do you think about the recent craze of Poker? Has it affected board gaming?

Mike Selinker: I love it when the rest of the world catches up to what I like to do with my spare time. I can't be too down on televised poker, because it's enabled me to write the books I've wanted to write for years. I don't know how long it's going to be hot, but I'm going to do whatever projects I can in the time that it is hot.

I think it's also great when competitive gameplay gets more respect. For a while, it looked like Magic tournaments might have that, then maybe Scrabble, with the great Stefan Fatsis book Word Freak and such. But poker is the only one that's actually fun to watch on TV. There's a lovely thrill to knowing information that competitors do not. Maybe it legitimizes sitting around a table and playing a game for some folks. Maybe they'll be more inclined to try other competitive table games, like TCGs and board games.

Tom Vasel: Do you think it possible to see other tabletop games make it to TV besides Poker?

Mike Selinker: I think for a game to have even a chance to make it onto TV, there must be (b) hidden information, and (b) money on the line. That last part isn't enough: Celebrity Blackjack is a terrible show, because there's no point to hiding one's cards against the other players; you do what you do based on the cards you get and the tables you (hopefully) memorized.

But imagine Battleship on TV, played for money or prizes. There's even taunting built into the game. Put that on Nickelodeon, get some teenage Norman Chad to comment, and I'd watch that.

Interestingly, the next big competitive-game leap to TV might not be games at all. They might be puzzles. There are a major championships for crossword puzzles and other puzzle types; I've even designed some of those competitions. They look pretty good on TV too. Someone has to figure out a way to make them more interactive, and they could be very interesting.

Tom Vasel: What do you think about the massive amount of board games and companies that are currently in existence? Do you think this positive growth that we've seen will continue?

Mike Selinker: It'd be suicidal for me to suggest there are too many games out there. I love the fact that boardgaming is going through a renaissance, and that means there are lots of good games out there, and lots of bad ones. The customer has to carefully select where to spend his or her dollars, but that's a lot better than having very few choices, which is where we were ten years ago.

Designers' names are becoming pretty important, I think. With luck, people will latch onto a game like Gloria Mundi because James and I put our name on it. I've had a whole bunch of hits in the last two years, so I expect good things from my games. Hopefully, other people do too. You can't see me crossing my fingers, but I'm doing it nonetheless.

Tom Vasel: What would be your advice to aspiring game designers?

Mike Selinker: Find some other great game designers, and make games with them. That's what I've done my whole career. I can't think of any game I've done from start to finish without some major help from at least one of my peers.

Tom Vasel: How do you go about co-designing games with others? Are there any pitfalls to doing so?

Mike Selinker: It's different with different designers. With Risk Godstorm, there were a number of other designers who funneled everything into me. So Rich Baker and Mike Donais and Teeuwynn Woodruff's continuity team would come up with rules and place names and such, and I'd incorporate them into the base game design that I started with. Eventually we had something pretty far from what I started with, and much better.

With James, it's a bit different. One of us usually starts the process with a base design. So I came up with the framework for Dungeonville, while James did the base design of Gloria Mundi. That's typically done solo. Then the other person either takes it over at some point, or does the work around the fringes. It varies from game to game.

There's no real pitfalls that I can think of. James and I fight all the time, but the games are clearly better than if we'd done them alone. Co-writing a book together is a bit harder; we definitely do not co-write at twice our individual speed. But those books are better for both of us working together.

Well, okay, there's one pitfall: You have to split the money. But we do so many projects that we get the advantage of being able to have our names on many more projects than either of us would otherwise.

Tom Vasel: Do publishers prefer games with more than one name on them?

Mike Selinker: I used to have fights with folks about this at Wizards, where some people thought that having multiple designers' name on a box sent a mixed message to customers about what they could expect. But that hasn't been the case since I left Wizards. Publishers like Rio Grande have gotten the idea that James has fans from Cheapass and I have different fans from Avalon Hill, and members of both of those groups may sample a game like Gloria Mundi. That's the theory, anyway.

We're about to test that theory in a very big way. We've just announced the formation of a new boardgame company called Titanic Games, with me, James, Lisa Stevens of Paizo Publishing, and Bob Watts of Sabertooth. It will be publishing, among other big boardgames, a game called Stonehenge that I did with James, Richard Borg, Bruno Faidutti, and Richard Garfield. It's a unique concept called the "anthology boardgame," where a bunch of designers agree on a set of pieces (in this case, the pieces of Stonehenge), and then all use them to create different games. So instead of getting one game by a big name designer, you get five. This should be out within a year, and I hope it catches on like wildfire.

Tom Vasel: How exactly does Titanic Games work? I mean, how does it relate to other companies, who is the President, will these be new games or German reprints, etc.?

Mike Selinker: James and I are R&D, and Lisa and Bob are business. The first three games are: Stonehenge, which I just described; Dust & Sin, a game about building Las Vegas from scratch; and a super-deluxe version of James's classic Kill Dr. Lucky. It's a good match for us. Lisa has an impressive marketing arm with Paizo and her successful online store, and Bob can make anything. I expect everything Titanic does to be ultra-high quality.

Tom Vasel: Can you tell us more about Dust & Sin, like the designer, etc.?

Mike Selinker: Dust & Sin is by James and me. You start out with a blank map of a Vegas-esque city, and place gorgeous plastic casinos out on the map. There's something like 60 six-sided dice in the game too. At the start of the game you're just staking out your casinos in the city, but by the end you're taking over other people's casinos, and betting millions in gambling games. It's one of the wildest games we've ever made.

Tom Vasel: Sounds exciting! When should we look for this game (and the other two)?

Mike Selinker: As a production issue, that's Bob's bailiwick, so I don't know. I find that every time I make a statement about a game's release date, I end up having to take it back. So, the best thing I can say is, "not long from now." My expectation is that we'll wait till the games are as close to perfect as we can make them. As I've said a bunch of times, "A game is only late once, but it's bad forever."

Tom Vasel: Mike, thanks for taking the time to answer these questions! It's exciting to hear about the new company, and I look forward to seeing your games! Do you have any final thoughts for our listeners?

Mike Selinker: Sure. A lot of people ask me how come I appear to be so confident in public settings. Here's Selinker's Law of Confidence: "You can't be nervous if you can hear Kool & The Gang's 'Jungle Boogie' in your head." Try it out next time you find yourself on stage, Tom.

Tom Vasel
August 24, 2005
"Real men play board games"
www.tomvasel.com