Princess Cory
I got a chance to have a conversation the Man, the Myth, the Legend – Mr. Cory Jones – at GenCon. We discussed a wide range of topics including:
- Cory’s GenCon experiences throughout the years
- His thoughts on interacting with the KickStarter backers
- How much time he gets to play/test Hex, his favorite deck types and cards
- Some interesting thoughts on a number of PVE-related areas:
- Gold Sinks
- Rewarding players for recruiting other players
- Spectral Lotus in PVE Tournaments
You can find the audio in this post. Here’s the full transcript:
Interviewer: So, when did you start coming to Gen Con?
Cory Jones: I have been coming to Gen Con for almost 20 years, back when it was in Wisconsin.
Interviewer: Really?
Cory Jones: Yeah. I started off working in the games industry at a company called Virgin Interactive, which is a very old publisher. My first Gen Con was coming with Westwood – Westwood make Command & Conquer – and so they sent out somebody from Virgin because Virgin was the publisher for Westwood and Command & Conquer. So, I brought some of Virgin’s games.
I think the game that I was showing that year was Broken Sword, which was a very long-running adventure game series, very popular. I think it was a UK developer. That was probably ’94, I’m gonna say, was my first Gen Con. So yeah, quite a while ago.
Interviewer: Up until this point, what do you think your highlight’s been? Is there one you specifically remember, or some product you were working on?
Cory Jones: Yeah, I think we had our first really big tournament for the Wow TCG at Gen Con. This is back when it was Upper Deck, and at the time I was working for Blizzard and it was awesome because I got to come and compete in the tournament. I’m a hardcore TCG player. I was in multiple pro tours for Magic. So, we had 430 people show up for this big tournament for WoW TCG, which was my baby, and it was such a satisfying experience.
But also, I got to play and I got third in the tournament. First day, I went nine and one. The second day, did well enough to get in the final eight, and then got knocked out in the semifinals. But had a blast. It was the best I had ever done in a high-end tournament and that it was for the WoW TCG, which is funny because it was a game that I was very involved with. Not that it gave me an advantage; the game has been out a long time at that point. But it was a ton of fun, and I loved that experience because everyone was so excited about the WoW TCG and was having so much fun, and it felt so good to see everyone enjoying it.
That was a big deal. Then a few years ago, the first one of these that we did as Cryptozoic, finally at my own company, my and my partners, having the chance to come to Gen Con and then having so many people come up from the industry and say such nice things about us and what we were trying to do. It’s not a huge industry and after 20 years I know a lot of people, so having them come up and congratulate us was such a nice thing. Then this one, having the chance to actually see people playing HEX after spending the last two and a half years so focused on this game and seeing the reaction of people and how much they love it, even when it’s buggy right now and it’s crashing and it’s having all these problems.
Interviewer: It’s still incredible.
Cory Jones: It doesn’t have problems once you’re playing, but getting the networks up was a nightmare. But having them play it and actually validate that what we were doing is good is indescribable. Asking people, “Hey, did you win or lose?” “I lost.” “Did you have fun?” “Yeah, I had fun!” Even losing, they’re having fun, so to me that says yeah, I think we’re on the right track. Those are my three biggest happiness at Gen Con moments.
Interviewer: Excellent. What’s it been like this year to meet the Kickstarter backers?
Cory Jones: Awesome. This is the best. I’ve been involved with a lot of games. It’s funny, lots of games, lots of communities. Everything from Blizzard fans to the people who used to come Versus and Upper Deck to all manner and make of people, even like from our Epic Spell Wars, meeting all the people that loved that game.
There’s something about – and I’ve said it a couple of times – about the Kickstarter people for HEX. It’s interesting to me – and it’s not just that people like the game or are fans of the game or fans of what it can be – it seems like there is this component where because it’s trying to be something new and it is in many ways such a big high concept that is not out yet, all the people that jumped in seem to be creative people because they can imagine – that’s why our message boards are filled up with suggestions, and good ones. So, it’s interesting to me that we seem to have attracted this initial core audience of people that are hyper-creative, hyper-passionate.
That’s who I am, so meeting lots of like-minded people that can see the vision, are intrigued by all of the interesting things we can do and excited about trying to explore that space, it’s created a really interesting community. I think that’s been the biggest upside for me is having all these people together, and being able to meet them and talk about the game has been very energizing. I’ll say that for the whole team, that we’d all worked on this for so long before the Kickstarter came out, and terrified that someone was gonna launch a game that was like this because who knows, it just seems like a no-brainer to me, and couldn’t tell anyone about it, and it was so hard. We were going through some hard times with this game before the Kickstarter. Clearly, we had to do a Kickstarter.
So, we were having some hard time and then the Kickstarter hit, and it was such a positive – it just reenergized everyone. There was a lot of wind under our wings, which was great. This is just another awesome push to keep everyone’s motivation at f&^%(*&g 10, and that’s been huge.
Interviewer: What are you looking forward to in the rest of GenCon this year? Anything that excites you?
Cory Jones: The big one, the dinner. I’m very excited by that, the chance to get to chat with everyone. We have some little gifts for everyone. I think that’s gonna be a ton of fun. That’s the big thing. I wasn’t really here to see anything in particular.
Now that the kinks are worked out and Friday has taken off without a hitch, so I’m confident that we’ll have the game running the entire rest of the show. I feel a big breath of relief. Yesterday, my stress level was very high, although Chris Woods is magical. Literally, I can’t even describe, I have so many rock stars that work on this project, all the game designers. Dan and Ben, Phil, Matt, they’re all so good.
Then Chris is an engineer and game designer. His instincts, his abilities are just ridiculous. He’s like a magical creature. I sometimes feel like I caught a unicorn, ride him around. It’s so incredible.
Interviewer: It just felt like as the dominos were falling down yesterday, he was unfazed by it. He just kept -
Cory Jones: Nope, that’s Chris.
Interviewer: ”Okay, something else to fix.”
Cory Jones: On the inside, I know he’s stressed because I’ve seen it, but he is always cool as a cucumber. We get in debates about things that are subjective and it’s that engineering side where it’s like, “No, this is correct.” I’m, “Chris, that’s your opinion ’cause this is a taste-driven thing.” He’s, “No, that’s correct.” I’m very careful about what I say. I’m, “Okay.”
Interviewer: How much time do you actually get to play test decks nowadays?
Cory Jones: Oh, a lot.
Interviewer: Really?
Cory Jones: Yeah, we play constantly. We were playing a while with physical cards still because mocking up and everything.
Interviewer: Learn the new sets?
Cory Jones: Scripting everything takes time, so it’s easier actually for us, for all the Dungeon stuff that we’re testing. Raids and Dungeons have been a big focus right now ’cause Set One’s done. We did draft for months, so three nights a week people would stay after work and do drafting. So, we’re still doing that, but we’re doing it for Set Two right now.
Set Two is in design, but then I have a whole part of the team, Drew Walker and Matt Dunn’s on that, and Kevin and Chris, all doing Dungeons right now in the class stuff, making sure all the class balance stuff is all working, testing mercenaries, doing the raid stuff. That’s been on top of the testing right now, so playing that’s been super-fun. Yeah, I jump into the client and make decks all the time because I can play against the AI a lot, so I’ll play some of the Dungeon AIs and just screw around, making crazy decks.
Interviewer: Have you got a favorite deck or archetype?
Cory Jones: I’ve been having a lot of fun with the Dorf robot stuff. I’m a very Johnny player. I’m not very Spikey. I’m very much about combos and trying to come up with crazy fun weirdness, as you can see in things like Epic’s well-worn Food Fight. That’s definitely my jam. I tend to be very Johnny, so, those are the kind of decks I typically make.
Interviewer: Favorite cards?
Cory Jones: Well, Replicator’s Gambit is one of my favorites. I love the inspiration engine. Like the Shrine of Prosperity, all the things that create all of the random effects and these more splashy – very Johnny. Those are the cards that I love the most.
Interviewer: I have a lot of fun playing the Ruby Burn Deck yesterday. When it works, it works really well.
Cory Jones: I like Zoltag so I start making all the dudes, and it’s so much fun. When it goes off, yeah, you get out Turn One beater that you’re charging up on Turn Two. It’s great.
Interviewer: Yesterday we talked in the group about various aspects of PVE, and I’m interested in getting your comments about those. I think the first one was, you said that you had some interesting ideas about really interesting gold sinks. I want to hear your general comments about that.
Cory Jones: World of Warcraft did something interesting. They created the need to repair your stuff. Gold sinks are hyper-important. Without something that actively removes gold from the economy, you’re never going to be able to create the level of desirability that you want. Gold has to be the lubricant between all the other stuff in the game, and that lubricant is a big piece of what turns the gears to make desirability go up.
That’s super-important because when I kill a boss or whatever, and I’m waiting to see what he drops, if I don’t give a shit – and I think we saw a game in the not-so-distant pass that’s about random drops that didn’t quite catch it right, and it really makes the visceral, the excitement piece of the game disappear, which is super-problematic. So, you need ways to pull the gold out of the economy so that it still is important, and allows people to buy and sell and trade and all that stuff. The problem is, in my opinion, gold sinks that are mandatory part, they’re almost like – repairing your gear in WoW is almost a pay wall. It was. So, I don’t want to do a lot of that. I’m trying to figure out ways to not do that at all.
I don’t want to say what it is yet because it’s going to be a pretty big reveal, but I’ve built into the game a gold sink that is fun. It’s going to be something you’re gonna be able to do that is going to be super-fun and I think people are gonna love it. Maybe I’m wrong. My instincts are usually good, but I’ve been taught that I can be wrong via Kickstarter. But I think people are going to like it, and I think it actually gives you the opportunity to use gold in a way that’s super-fun and is going to pull it out of the economy because it’s something you’re gonna want to do as opposed to have to do.
I think that’s gonna keep gold very high in terms of value, which is gonna help everyone, including the people who want to play for free. Maybe I’m working against myself here, but the idea that the PBE guys gathering gold, gold may be a commodity that is valuable enough that they’re going to be able to trade it for some of the PBP cards that they want, so your time played can actually equal the other pieces of the game so that you don’t have to spend a ton of money.
Interviewer: You also talked a little bit about strategies for rewarding players for recruiting others to the game?
Cory Jones: Oh, yeah. So, that was a very specific thing. When I was writing the original – I sat down and wrote the original GDO for HEX. So every feature, every everything, I wrote it all down. Then I was, you know, so often I’ll see games and I’ll be, “Why didn’t they this?” or “Why didn’t they that?” The whole thing was a giant brain dump.
I actually looked at all the designers, got comments, and they added stuff to it. Then I said I got to back up, look at this with a different set of eyes. Are there any clever, fun things that I didn’t think of, coming at this from a completely different vector, that should be in this that are innovative? That’s my thing as a product development person.
I consider myself an inventor, on top of everything else. I come up with crazy ideas for products, or whatever. I used that example – like the MMO mouse. That exists because of me. Our partners at Blizzard want to do peripherals and I said, “How about doing an MMO mouse?” because it’s something I wanted, all six buttons on the side. I see it at Staples, that category of mice, of MMO mouse, and I’m, “Holy shit! That exists because of me.”
I love inventing things. I was thinking about it, and this one specifically was one of the things that I came out of that session of ideas. It was called the platinum crown, and the idea was to build an actual multi-level sales component to HEX where if you recruit people, they would be underneath you, and then a percentage of the platinum they spent you would get, and the people under them you would get a percentage but smaller, and it would create a standard multi-level sales program. So, the whole thinking was, the people that were hyper-advocates, the ones that were going out there recruiting friends, they would actually have a very tangible way to see a reward for that. Which to me was, that’s a pretty cool idea.
Clearly, multi-level sales works. Often, it’s people pushing products they don’t like to try and make money. This is more holistic because the money you’re getting is really just for the game, and it’s helping you support the hobby that you’re in love with. So, that was the idea. Hopefully, we could have had a visual toolkit for it, so you could actually manage it. Go in, you could see it, it would show boxed out all the people underneath you, it would show you how much platinum you had gotten from them and then down from them who they had recruited, so you could explore the whole thing.
There are so many problems with that idea, it’s almost – I was probably high when I thought of that, I don’t know. I still want to do it. I’ve taken it off the MBP list for beta, as an example, because I had to make sure that I tightened up ’cause delivery dates are going to be very important. Clearly, if you’ve read anything on the Kickstarter, they want the game done. So, I need to make sure that only the most critical things are there.
Some of these extras that I want will come. I wasn’t kidding; I have probably 40 to 50 features brainstormed out that we haven’t even talked about yet. That’s one of them, the platinum crown. It was in my original GDOs. There actually may have been a little work done on it by one of the engineers, actually.
So, there may be some of the baseline for it already in. But it’s something that I want to do in the future. I don’t know, what do you think? Do you think that’s a good idea?
Interviewer: I think it’s definitely really interesting. But for me, it’s more representative of the long-term viability of the game because there are so many things that you’ve alluded to in various conversations that make it seem like years from now, the game’s still gonna be growing and better and bigger. I think that’s why a lot of the people I’ve talked to here, that’s why they joined the Kickstarter and invested money. It was exciting to a lot of people.
Cory Jones: Well, no one more than me. A year from now, what we’re offering as a game will have changed dramatically. In two years, it’ll be even more. My goal for it has always – I made no bones about it, I want to be first to market with this game and then, I want to stay so far ahead of what anyone else can do that there’s no reason for anyone to ever consider leaving to go play something else. I want to be like WoW for MMOs, no one can compete with them. I want to be that game for TCGs.
The platinum crown thing, my fear is – the part of the idea that makes me most nervous, I think it will create a lot of drama because I think that when people, “I had these nine people underneath me, and then one of them left and then signed underneath this other person.” It’s almost like a meta-guild that actually has money involved. People are gonna get pissed. I think it may end up causing more hurt feelings than anything.
So maybe if I make it all blind, like you can’t see that tree stuff, maybe it’s just a raw number. A lot of thinking needs to go into this. This is where Chris is often the voice of reason on some of this stuff. He’ll keep telling me, “That’s not smart,” or “That’s incorrect. This meeting’s may be incorrect.”
Interviewer: One last question. We talked yesterday about PVE tournaments and maybe progressing through six levels of a tournament, and you brought up the specific example of the Spectral Lotus. I’m interested in your thoughts.
Cory Jones: That’s an interesting thing. The idea – we talk about this a lot, it’s interesting – if you put four Spectral Lotuses in your deck – we’re gonna do PVE, PVP tournaments. If you put four Spectral Lotuses in your deck, on Round One you would draw a Spectral Lotus in your opening hand. If you use it, it turns into the Black Tiger. That means that in Round Two, you’ve got three Spectral Lotuses and the Black Tiger.
Now, a Black Tiger’s not a bad card, it’s a very good card, but it’s not a Spectral Lotus. So, you’ve got to make the decision of when you want to pop the Lotuses in what round because it’s going to remain a Black Tiger for the rest of the tournament. Do you wait until Round Five – “Oh, in this tournament I didn’t do so well, so nah, I didn’t use them.” Or, “In this tournament, I’m at Round Five, or Six, or Seven, and I’m winning, I’m doing great, and I’ve got all four of my Spectral – ” it’s like smart bombs in Asteroids, right? It’s, when do you pop that thing? And if you don’t, it’s a dead card in your hand, which is a beat.
So, we were laughing about how interesting that is, one less card. You’re playing with the most powerful card in the game and yet situationally, it’s giving you a really bad draw. So, it’s real interesting. I think people are gonna have a lot of fun figuring that out.
Interviewer: Yeah. I think there’s still some utility in it because there’s the zero cost in it. You get to draw a card when you play it, right?
Cory Jones: Right.
Interviewer: So it’s not completely useless, but I can see times where you could end up with three or four of them in your opening hand and one resource, and you’d have to make a decision.
Cory Jones: It’s zero cost, but doesn’t it trigger when it comes into play, or do you actually have to sacrifice it when it’s in play? Am I thinking of it wrong?
Interviewer: No. Oh, maybe it is.
Cory Jones: I think it might be. I’m almost positive, you don’t get the card without using it. So it is a dead card. Although in some decks, the extra artifact at zero cost is not bad. So, if you’ve got a deck specifically around exhausting artifacts to charge up plans or whatever, then yeah it’s not bad. But –
Interviewer: Yeah, you can definitely see situations -
Cory Jones: Well, it’s brutally powerful in anything, but for your speed rush deck, that’s not doing much for you. That’s rough.
Interviewer: Thank you for the time. I really appreciate it.
Cory Jones: Oh no. Again, if you want to chat longer or more about this stuff, I’m always happy to do it.
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