Hex Vault » GenCon 2013

GenCon 2013: Funktion’s Video Wrapup – Part 2

HexVault — Mon, 26 Aug 2013 18:39:46 +0000

Here is Part 2 (of 2) of Funktion’s review of everything Hex-related at GenCon:

Some of the topics discussed:

Hex Vault Announcement
Initial Impressions of HexTCG
Standout Decks & Cards
Portensio of Avon Giveaway – subscribe to FunktionFails on YouTube!

Enjoy! Enter our iPad/HexCon and Jadiim Sleeves giveaways!

GenCon 2013: Funktion’s Video Wrap-up – Part 1

HexVault — Fri, 23 Aug 2013 13:11:08 +0000

Here is Part 1 (of 2) of Funktion’s review of everything Hex-related at GenCon:

Some of the topics discussed:

Hex PTRs
Tournament Cash Prizes
Gold Sinks
Guilds vs. Teams
PVE Content
Funktion’s Conversations with Ben (and there were many!)
Dragon Lord Dinner – Zeedu
Portensio of Avon Giveaway Coming Soon!

Enjoy! Enter our iPad/HexCon and Jadiim Sleeves giveaways!

GenCon 2013: Funktion’s Video Wrap-up – Part 1 #GenCon #HexTCG @FunktionFails http://t.co/YX0hHy8weh

— Hex Vault (@HexVault) August 23, 2013

Forum Launch Giveaway – Jadiim Sleeves (GenCon Exclusive)

HexVault — Thu, 22 Aug 2013 16:18:19 +0000

Our forums are now live! To commemorate the occasion we’re giving away a code (well, at least one!) for the GenCon exclusive Jadiim, the Emerald Dragon. All you have to do is create a worthwhile post in the newly opened Hex Vault forums! I’ll randomly select a winner to send the code to on September 8th, 2013.

No official picture of the sleeves yet, but this image of Jadiim should tide you over (and it was the image associated with the sleeves reward at GenCon)…

Jadiim

GenCon 2013: Dragon Lord Dinner – Cory’s Speech

HexVault — Thu, 22 Aug 2013 06:21:42 +0000

Jinuyr has very kindly provided me the video he took of Cory’s speech at the GenCon Dragon Lord dinner. Here it is:

There’s still time to enter our giveaway!

GenCon 2013: Interview with Dan Clark, Lead Developer [TRANSCRIPT]

HexVault — Wed, 21 Aug 2013 18:04:27 +0000

I got a chance to have a conversation HEX Lead Developer Dan Clark at GenCon. We discussed a wide range of topics including:

Dan’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 game design-related areas:
- Novel Mechanics
- Not letting his personal preferences impact the overall design

You can find the audio in this post. Here’s the full transcript:

Interviewer: Dan, how did you end up at Cryptozoic?

Dan Clark: Cryptozoic also makes the WoW TCG card game, and I was formerly a player, played that. After talking with a few of the people that work in R&D, they asked me if I would like a job and I took it.

Interviewer: Excellent.

Dan Clark: Yeah. It’s nice to move from playing the game you love to working for the company that you love, so.

Interviewer: Yeah. It’s a careful balance, though, right, because sometimes it takes the things you really like and if you have to do them for a job, it’s not quite as exciting as it once was.

Dan Clark: Oh yeah, no no no. Once you see behind the veil and you are now trying to do the best game that you can possibly do for everybody to experience, for some reason once you get back and just play it for fun, it’s not quite the same.

Interviewer: Right ’cause you’re overanalyzing it and thinking -

Dan Clark: Yeah. I can never turn it off. It’s, “Oh, we could have done that with that card,” or “We maybe should have done this differently.” It’s hard to turn off, so.

Interviewer: What are you responsible for on HEX?

Dan Clark: I’m Development Lead on HEX, so that’s mostly tweaking a lot of the cards, balancing issues, making sure we’re providing the best experience possible, and it’s not a negative play experience for a lot of decks. Then, I work in close conjunction with Ben, who’s lead on design, and try to push for certain paths that we might want to take and future plans for what we want to be, going down in future sets.

Interviewer: Sure. We’ll talk about game design in a little bit, but I want to talk about Gen Con in general, since we’re here.

Dan Clark: Sure.

Interviewer: How many times have you been?

Dan Clark: I have been to Gen Con every year since 2004 now, I think.

Interviewer: Almost 10 years, right?

Dan Clark: Every year, yeah.

Interviewer: Before this year, what would you say was your highlight?

Dan Clark: Oh wow. Gen Con is always such a great experience. It’s got to be the tournaments that I used to play in. I used to love playing, and it was too much fun. Even coming back now, I’m not playing in any tournaments, but it feels at home. It’s nice to be here. Everybody is just, you come here and you do your thing. It doesn’t matter what you’re doing, you’re at home, you just have fun.

Interviewer: Are the same people around? Do you run into the same people that you used to play with in those tournaments?

Dan Clark: Oh yeah, you still see people that you haven’t seen in eight or nine years, and get to say hi and see what they’re up to.

Interviewer: The Kickstarter was a big deal. What’s it been like to actually talk to some of the backers while you’ve been here?

Dan Clark: It’s been great. Everybody’s so positive. None of this would have been possible without the help of everybody that’s come together. This game is going to be successful with a great community, and we started off on such a good foot with everybody that’s so excited to get to see the game and be a part of it. I’m really excited to move forward and be able to have the best experience for everybody and communicate with the community.

We want to let everybody know that we are gamers, and we’re always available to have talks and communication. Let me know if you think a card is broken. Let me know what you find the best experience, and we’ll try to implement that.

Interviewer: I think that’s one of the reasons why people are so invested in this is because they feel like you might not agree with everything that people say, but people feel like they’re at least being listened to, so there’s a dialogue.

Dan Clark: We want to make it a game for everybody. Everybody should get to have a say, and there’s so many different aspects to this game, too, that pretty much no matter what you are, you will be able to find your own place in this game. We want to make sure that we’re always taking feedback from people and improving the experience for everybody.

Interviewer: What’s your favorite bit about Gen Con this year?

Dan Clark: I really enjoy seeing people in costumes.

Interviewer: Really? So, Princess Cory?

Dan Clark: Yeah. I got my picture with him, actually. I put it up on my Facebook.

Interviewer: Excellent. What are you looking forward to for the next two days? Is there something you’re gonna do while you’re here?

Dan Clark: I’m really looking forward to the dinner tonight. I want to be able to mingle with people. But just being here and getting to see so many old faces. Everybody’s so friendly. It’s such a positive experience that I’m just gonna enjoy every part of it.

Interviewer: Excellent. Talk a little bit about game design, then. I’m interested in whether or not there was a card or mechanic that was originally in Set One that didn’t make the cut and that made you sad. You thought, “I really liked this, but there’s not a place for it.”

Dan Clark: There certainly has been quite a few of those things. It’s difficult to remember though, ’cause there’s so many different moving pieces going on. Once you move past, “Okay, we can’t do this any more,” it almost -

Interviewer: Fades into memory?

Dan Clark: Yeah. There will be plenty of times where we’ll come up with a new mechanic that’s, “Oh wait, this is kind of like something that we’ve canned before.” So you still remember it, but it’s hard to grasp. But let’s see, some of the things I’ve been upset… There’s a few designs that I liked that you just can’t really do just ’cause some of the ways that they play just are not a great experience. They’re too ticky tacky and takes too long to resolve, or something.

Some of my favorite cards are any card that is a head game, essentially. Like Alabaster Sphinx we just previewed recently, and that’s the one where you get to select a troop, and then if they select what you’ve selected, they get it. If they don’t, you get it. So, I really appreciate games like that.

A lot of times in the actual tabletop card games, you can’t really do things like that because obviously there’s an amount of secrecy that is difficult to resolve, but also there is some amount of a feel-bad experience if you lose those types of games. But in the digital environment, it’s actually a lot easier to move past that. You’re not sitting across from the person. You get to enjoy it a little bit more.

Interviewer: Was there anything specifically that didn’t make it, but it was because it was technically not possible at the moment, but it was put into Set Two or Set Three?

Dan Clark: Everything that we’ve come up with that is technically not possible at this time is so cool that I don’t want to spoil it for once we do get the technology to implement it and are able to do that correctly.

Interviewer: So presumably, that means that – a lot of the mechanics currently are standard TCG mechanics, right? They have different names, but we’re all pretty comfortable with having used them in the past. You’re pretty confident there are things that are completely different from things we’ve seen in the past?

Dan Clark: Yes. We are a digital game, and that is a very important part of making sure it’s, “This is a new experience and we want to get as many digital things in there.” Since we’re just starting off, if we go over the rails on how much new stuff is going on, it can get a little crazy. We want to ease people into it.

So with each set, we’ll be trying to implement more and more stuff like, “Hey, look at this!” Once people get accustomed to the game and what’s going on, we’ll be able to do more and more stuff, plus when we’re able to implement the things, too.

Interviewer: Right ’cause actually, I think even Set One, as an example, inspires a pretty complicated mechanic because it’s tough to keep track of all the things it potentially does. It’s clear that if you weren’t playing in a digital format, it would be really tricky to make sure that things were going right. You clearly play quite a bit. You do a lot of testing, I’m sure. What’s your favorite deck archetype?

Dan Clark: I really like Dwarves. I don’t really necessarily care if I win or not, I just want to do my cool thing. Dwarves let me tinker around and build whatever cool stuff I want to do. I really like the Inspiration Engine, and just start making things at random.

Interviewer: Do you know that Cory gave me exactly the same answer?

Dan Clark: It’s such a cool card.

Interviewer: How, then, do you stop that from influencing your design decisions or the things that you say -

Dan Clark: You have to be disciplined. You have to recognize that this is something that you want, not something that’s for the better of the game.

Interviewer: Right. It’s easier said than done though, right?

Dan Clark: It is, but as I was saying before, after you see behind the veil, your mindset is really geared towards what’s best for the game, not what’s best for me. So, it just got a lot easier, in time. There’s still a lot of things where it’s, “I would really appreciate this, so I’m gonna try to push for it,” but that’s gonna only ever be a one-card design or something like that. I would never damage a mechanic or something because it was something that I really wanted to see go through.

Interviewer: So presumably, you worked on the WoW trading card game first and then you moved onto HEX. Is HEX basically the highlight for you, or -

Dan Clark: Yeah. I’m having a lot of fun working on HEX. There’s a lot of new things. It was difficult to make the transition of, you need to stop thinking of ways to do things in your traditional card game and you need to get into the digital’s mindset. It’s still constantly a transition. We keep getting better and better at what we’re doing, and it’s just gonna get better form here on out.

Interviewer: Are you spending a lot of time on the PVE stuff or -

Dan Clark: Yeah, I dabble into the PVE, although I move over and give balancing feedback and we talk about ways to implement different things that we’re moving forward with and what’s gonna be the best experience for the PVE players. So yeah, I __________ PVP, but I work a lot of the PVE, as well.

Interviewer: Excellent. Well, I appreciate the time.

Dan Clark: Of course. Thank you very much.

Interviewer: I don’t want to keep you too much longer, but it was good to meet you and I’m sure I’ll see you this evening, as well.

Dan Clark: Yeah, I look forward to it. Thank you.

Interviewer: Thank you.

[End of Audio]

GenCon 2013: Interview with a Princess [TRANSCRIPT]

HexVault — Wed, 21 Aug 2013 17:48:31 +0000

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.

[End of Audio]

GenCon 2013: Interview with Ben Stoll, Game Designer [TRANSCRIPT]

HexVault — Wed, 21 Aug 2013 16:04:11 +0000

I got a chance to have a conversation HEX Game Designer Ben Stoll at GenCon. We discussed a wide range of topics including:

Ben’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 game design-related areas:
- Resources, and what sets HEX apart
- Set 2 Sapphire Dragon
- The “ambush” mechanic
Motivations for working on HEX

You can find the audio in this post. Here’s the full transcript:

Interviewer: Excellent. So, I’m here with -

Ben Stoll: Ben Stoll.

Interviewer: Ben, so how many GenCons have you been to?

Ben Stoll: Oh man. I don’t think I’ve missed a GenCon since I was 15 or so. This is at least 12 in a row. Maybe more.

Interviewer: Really?

Ben Stoll: Yeah.

Interviewer: In the past years, what’s been your highlight of all the ones before this one?

Ben Stoll: Sure. It’s funny because as I get older, it’s different. When I first came here, my first Gen Con, I remember I played Settlers of Catan. My dad showed it to me and I was, “This is amazing!” It was a new experience for me. I’ve always loved TCGs, miniatures games. Then there was a big period of my life where I was doing that, and what I was excited about was tournaments and things like that.

Recent years, to be honest with you actually, my favorite thing – of course I’m now working at Crypto, so it’s a different experience now. I love being here for getting to interface with our fans. People come up and they want to demo our games, and we want to show our products to people. Cryptozoic in general and me as well, very personally, we love the community and stuff like that. So getting to interface with people face-to-face.

If someone tells you they like your game, it’s the best feeling in the world. It’s like, you got to make someone happy by doing this sweet creative thing and making a game, it’s pure bliss. It’s like living the dream. That’s my favorite thing these days is people.

Then beyond that, I would say the art show. I love artists. I love playing to artists and I love buying – I’ve spent hundreds of dollars on art.

Interviewer: Really? What sort of things did you pick up?

Ben Stoll: This guy that I love, Tony Steel, he does these really cute takes on stuff, so I just bought five prints from him. I’m gonna do a little theme on a wall somewhere in my house or something. It’s Greek monsters, so he’s got a little cute Cyclops, a little sheep running around, a cute Medusa and a cute Hydra. They’re evil, but very cute. I love that kind of stuff, goofy, quirky stuff like that.

Interviewer: Excellent. What about this one in particular? HEX is new, you’ve been able to talk to people about it. What’s been the highlight of this Gen Con?

Ben Stoll: I would say the absolute highlight so far was last night, the Dragon Lord dinner was awesome because it was end of a long workday. Now we get to go have this super-good dinner, best dinner I’ve had here at this Con, and all of you guys are there, which is super-fun. I never want to shut up when I’m talking to you guys and I’m always, “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I went on so long,” and then everybody’s always, “No, it’s okay, we wanted you to spill your guts.” So, I was, “Okay, great.”

I got to have a nice dinner, got to hang out with everybody, and it was lots of positive energy because we are the people on our end that love HEX the most and you are the people on your end that love HEX the most, so us all getting to hang out is amazing. So, yeah.

Interviewer: I agree, it was a lot of fun. It must have been six hours just flew by, it felt like 15 minutes.

Ben Stoll: Oh my God, I know. I could have stayed there literally all night. I was so sad they kicked us out. We were still hovering outside, even after the doors closed, for a while. It was great.

Interviewer: Is there anything non-Cryptozoic that you’ve tried to do at the Con? Was there any game you were interested in seeing?

Ben Stoll: Let me see. Man, normally what I do is I just walk the floor, and there’s not always something ahead of time that I’ve necessarily picked out because I usually just do it on the fly. So no, there was no product I came here specifically, to be perfectly honest, and was, “I have to test this thing out.”

I usually just walk the floor, feel it out, demo as much as I can. We did the publisher speed-dating thing the other night. That was awesome and that kind of took the place of that for me this year.

Interviewer: What was that?

Ben Stoll: It was such a great idea. Basically, a bunch of publishers – we teamed up with – oh my gosh, with – what are those guys called? It doesn’t matter, I’m sorry. Sorry guys that I was about to plug ’cause you guys are awesome and I can’t remember who you are – but the publishers went table to table and everybody gave a five-minute game design pitch for their game.

These are unpublished game designers largely. One guy had been published previously, but for the most part, these are the people that are trying to get their game design career off the ground. So, they pitch their game for five minutes to us and we follow up with the people that we’re interested in. That was a lot of fun.

Interviewer: You probably go to a lot of other Cons as well. Is this the best one? Is there another one you like?

Ben Stoll: Oh yeah. I love Cons, period, but I can snap answer that Gen Con is my favorite Con by far. It always has been. It’s my favorite four days out of the year. It’s better than Christmas.

Interviewer: Let’s talk about game design a little bit.

Ben Stoll: Yeah.

Interviewer: We had a really interesting conversation last night about resources and the availability of resources in TCGs. I was wondering whether or not you could talk about what you discussed last night, like why you think the HEX is -

Ben Stoll: Resource system is good?

Interviewer: Yeah.

Ben Stoll: Yeah. You mean, just go over some of that? Yeah, sure. A resource system has a lot of functionality. Many TCGs have some sort of mechanic tied to how you play the cards. The thing I like about a progressive resource system – there’s a lot.

For one thing, a progressive resource system lends the game to an arc. So, the game experiences more texture because as the game progresses; the things that we’re doing become more impactful. When I start out, I’m putting little troops into play and playing minor actions. As the game progresses, though, if I make it ’til Turn Six, either one of two things is happening. I don’t have any six drops in my deck ’cause I’m super-aggressive and you’re almost dead, so there’s lots of attention and excitement. Or I am a slower deck and I’m putting down some powerful six cross dragon and he’s gonna put you in a world of pain. So, I like that.

On a related note, the thing I like particularly about something like HEX’s resource system is because there’s enough consistency that you get a good, strategic consistent-feeling experience, but there’s enough variance that the game is not gonna play out the same way every time. There’s a lot of tension on, “Am I gonna get that resource when I need it? Is my opponent going to?” It doesn’t have to be as extreme as getting “resource screwed,” it’s no, if my opponent just stalls a little bit and doesn’t play that fifth resource on Turn Five, that’s still a big deal. When he’s drawing that card off his deck, there’s a lot of tension and importance in what that card’s gonna be.

Beyond that, HEX’s resource system is deliberately designed to take advantage of the fact that HEX is a digital game. So, the resource system is extremely streamlined. It gets out of your way. There’s no messing with turning resource cards sideways and, “Oh, I turned the wrong one sideways,” and “Did I play a resource this turn? I can’t remember.” All that stuff is eliminated.

You play your resource card, it disappears forever, it’s gone, and you just got this nice, little, simple, clean, digital interface that’s telling you, “You have this many resource points. This is your threshold.” So yeah, I’m actually very big on HEX’s resource system.

Interviewer: Then, we were talking about how the charge powers are a way to serve and insure against resource flood.

Ben Stoll: Yes, sure, I’ll go on about that. Yeah, as we all know though, of course, despite the fact that I’ve just touted variance in resource system as actually being fun – which it is – and I believe it just is, whether people know it or not. I think a lot of people that say, “Well, I hate getting screwed” and all this stuff, it’s like well, you think you hate it, you kind of do. But how fun would poker be if your pocket aces never got busted, right? It would stink.

But anyways, HEX’s resource system recognizes that TCG players can hate this, and it can be really miserable. It is true that the worst thing is sitting there, discarding a card at the end of your turn every turn ’cause you can’t play your cards. You signed up to play the game; you didn’t sign up to discard the dragon every turn. So, the way HEX’s resource system is I believe actually alleviates this issue and hits just the sweet spot as compared to certain other TCGs.

So, there’s a few things. In HEX, you have a charge power, and the more resources you play, that’s the major way to get charges. There’s other ways, too. So, you’re incentivized already to play more resources. What this does is it incentivizes you to potentially play more resources in your deck than you would in, say, in a game where you have to risk a resource being a dead draw.

In HEX, you never have that risk. A resource is always live. It always does something useful. In fact, sometimes drawing that eighth resource means you just got to put a 6 / 6 squirrel titan into play because of your charge power. So, it’s very the opposite of that eighth resource being a dead draw. Which, we all know a dead draw feels like it sucks, too. So, you’re already incentivized to play more resources.

Because of that, there are two things. One, it’s less bad when you draw a ton of resources because of the stuff I just went on about. And also, because you’re playing potentially more resources, you are less likely to get screwed because there’s more resources in your deck. And beyond that, the one last cute thing I’ll throw in because it is important is the way the thresholding system works, sometimes in a TCG when you draw that resource that you really need, it still doesn’t really get you out of the jam ’cause you’re sitting there with a bunch of cards in your hand. All of a sudden drawing a resource, now you’ve got the ability to play those cards, but you can still only play one of them at a time.

In HEX, because of the way the thresholding system works, I rip that Ruby resource, I now have a Ruby threshold, suddenly all the Ruby cards in my hand are live, and so suddenly I’m right in the game now. I just got to totally catch up, and that’s a very exciting, fun moment. Not like, “Oh, I’m slightly less getting run over than I was before.” That’s my long spiel about the resource system.

Interviewer: Yeah, and compared to the experience over the last few days, it does feel like you’ve got something to do. There have been lots of games where I would traditionally have been resource-screwed, but you can still do a lot of things with two or three resources, especially in some of the Aggro decks.

Ben Stoll: Cool.

Interviewer: I’m interested in whether or not you have a pet card or mechanic in Set One that you were sad about?

Ben Stoll: Oh yes, I am. This card I really liked. It was really fun and it was very digital, and I have been told that we can do it later, but of course our tech guys are working hard. We got priorities, we got to get Alpha out to you guys, we got to get Beta out, we got to get the whole thing out.

Chris Woods, who’s our lead tech guy, he’s so good. He’s told me no almost never. This maybe, in fact, was the only sweet rare that I wanted to put in that he said, “Listen, it’s gonna make everything easier if you hold off on this one.” And I said, “Okay.” But what it was – and he was, “You may see it in the future.” So, a potential free spoiler, who knows?

He was a Coyotle. The Coyotle, they are experts in trapping and ambushing and things like that. So, he was a Coyotle Ambusher. What he was is, you could play him at quick speed any time you could play a quick action. Normally, you can’t play troops on your opponent’s turn. This guy you could.

But, even beyond that, you could play him when he was on top of your deck as though he was in your hand. You could see that he was on top of your deck, but your opponent can’t. So, your opponent might be sitting there and going, “Oh my opponent’s got no cards in his hand. He’s got nothing in play. I’m totally good just to have a free pass and attack over.” And then you’re, “Nope, Coyotle Ambusher off the top of my deck. Block.”

Interviewer: That sounds like a lot of fun.

Ben Stoll: Yeah.

Interviewer: That would be interesting. How many things didn’t get into Set One just because you didn’t have time to do the tech implementation of it?

Ben Stoll: Like I said, actually very few. That was the only one I could actually think of off the top of my head. I feel like maybe there were a couple other cards, but the thing is is the reason why HEX is gonna be so great, partially is because of all this cool digital stuff we get to do. We’ve known since Day One we want to be able to do every last funky, awesome, crazy, creative thing we can think up. In general, there wasn’t much. We got to do pretty much almost everything we wanted to do, yeah.

Interviewer: Excellent. I think I know the answer to this question, but probably other people don’t. What is your favorite deck type, archetype?

Ben Stoll: Gosh, I have so many favorites, I feel bad not mentioning any of – I love all the racial decks a lot. There’s lots of stuff you can do besides building a deck that’s centered around one of the main races, but those are all a lot of fun, I think. My favorite one of those is the Dwarf deck.

The Dwarves are, you’ll notice – or maybe you won’t, maybe – but you might notice that the Dwarf troops in general are small. They’re not big bruisers, like some of the other tribes. They can even be expensive for one attack two defense dudes and stuff like that. But their whole thing is, they recruit artifact troops to go to war for them, and they work together and tinker with artifacts and make all kinds of crazy stuff happen. The Dwarves get to do a lot of funky, weird stuff the other guys don’t get to do, and they’re a lot of fun.

Interviewer: When you’re designing cards or trimming the set or whatnot, how do you stop your personal preferences from influencing the set?

Ben Stoll: This is part of your maturation process as a game designer. Especially us ones that are very creative and we’re actually thinking up the crazy ideas, we have to really keep ourselves in check. Even myself included, there have been times where it’s just like I can tell that I’m getting too married to my own idea and Dan has to be, “No, we are putting this to rest. This is not acceptable. You are out of your mind.”

Then I will start to think about it and I go, “Yeah, and he’s probably right. Also, I’m probably championing this not because it’s right, but because I’ve got a little soft spot in my heart for it.” So, you just have to learn that about yourself and pay attention, and we do a pretty good job with that at Crypto, yeah.

Interviewer: You don’t need to tell me what they are, but are we going to see brand new mechanics in either Set One or Set Two that we’ve never heard of before?

Ben Stoll: Ah, interesting. I’m trying to think – I’m not sure -

Interviewer: ’Cause all of the mechanics we know about so far are traditional TCG mechanics, for the most part.

Ben Stoll: Oh yeah, of course, now I think about it. Yeah, Set One or Set Two, you said?

Interviewer: Yeah.

Ben Stoll: Yeah, both. There’s tons of new stuff in Set Two that no one’s ever seen, and also though, there is some stuff in Set Two that is a really sweet next level of progression of some awesome stuff you’ll see in Set One. So some of the stuff in Set One that people are already going crazy over, we take it to the next level in Set Two. But yeah, there’s also gonna be a few totally brand new things in Set Two.

In Set One a lot of the mechanics, because we spoil lots of different stuff and we’re trying to show different angles, some of the major keywords and stuff you’ve probably seen most of already, like there’s not another Inspire, where there’s something that’s across 20 cards. I think you guys have seen most of the major things like that, but there is lots of smaller stuff that you guys haven’t seen. Really cool escalations of five-card cycle. We have some stuff that’s in that space where there’s five cards that are all cool in a certain way people haven’t seen, lots of individual one-off designs that do funky digital stuff that no one’s seen yet ’cause we didn’t want to spoil everything ahead of time. We want it to still be sweet when you open the set. So, there’s still plenty of new stuff, yeah.

Interviewer: So, you basically spoiled the Zeedu, Sapphire Dragon (Set 2) last night. Who’s card was that? That was something you thought up? Someone else?

Ben Stoll: Yeah, that was me, yeah.

Interviewer: What was the thought behind it?

Ben Stoll: Well, part of the thought behind it was the dragons. There’s gonna end up being at least – what we have planned right now for right now, there’s one major dragon in each of the shards. We want each dragon to also be very representative of its shard. So Jadiim the Wild Dragon, that dude is just about the biggest, baddest dude on the block. He is monstrous.

That’s what Wild is partially about. It’s like we have big dudes that are fighting and turning sideways and bashing you down, and our troops are very powerful and they get buffed, and that’s – Jadiim’s all of that stuff. So, for Sapphire, Sapphire is very much about, I want to take control of the situation. How can I strategically optimize this to be as perfect as possible?

So, the Sapphire Dragon is very much about you’ve got very many options because when he does his thing and you choose a cost and you create a bunch of copies of the cost of that card in your hand and in play, well, between your hand and in play you’re probably gonna have many different costs going on. So, although the other cute thing you can do with them is to be, I’m building the all four cost stack up, of course, but otherwise when he connects, you have to be very strategic and most of the dragons are just like, “Here I am. You better stop me or you’re a dead man.” Zeedu forces you to think, and that’s a very Sapphire thing to do, so.

Interviewer: Right. ‘Cause presumably, you’re also thinking if you’ve got one in your hand, you’re thinking about what you’re gonna hold in your hand to maximize the value of his ability, once you play him and he gets a hit in.

Ben Stoll: Absolutely.

Interviewer: Then, you’ve been doing HEX for, what, two and a half years now, is it still fresh? Are you still as excited about it as you might have been back in the beginning?

Ben Stoll: Yeah.

Interviewer: It’s really new to us, but it’s not very new to you, so.

Ben Stoll: So, it’s funny. I’ll be honest. I’ll tell you, there’s a progression here. Right now, I’m actually more excited than I’ve ever been because working on Set Two has been this reinvigoration of joy ’cause we spent so long on Set One. But anyways, right now I’m super-excited. Working on Set Two is great. Seeing the PV stuff starting to finally become also really polished and awesome is great.

Then, of course, Gen Con in particular. This weekend is actually the most excited I’ve ever been because we’re showing it now for the first time. Well, not showing it, but people are playing it for the first time. Any time there’s a moment like that, it’s super-exciting. When the Kickstarter was going on, super-exciting. In the very beginning, also super-exciting. But I will, of course, be honest and admit there was a period of time in there where it’s just, we’re 16 months in. I’ve been slaving away, grinding away.

Interviewer: You’re not sure it was going anywhere?

Ben Stoll: Right. All of us really believe in the game, but we don’t have any external validation yet. We’re just, “I fricking hope banging our head against this thing to make it perfect is actually worthwhile. I don’t know.” Because we thought it was gonna be good, but when the Kickstarter goes up, you don’t know. Everybody’s still crossing their fingers and stressing out.

There was a period of time in there where for sure, I felt burned out. It’s a lot of work. That’s a long time for me. I know video games in general have long development cycles. I’m not used to quite such a long development cycle as HEX is personally as a hobby game designer historically. So, there was definitely a period of time there where I was burned out, we were all worried and kind of stressed. But that time is over now. We’re pumped again, so yeah.

Interviewer: Yeah, it must be exciting to see basically 16 games happening every 10 or 15 minutes and going really smoothly, in the scheme of things.

Ben Stoll: Absolutely.

Interviewer: Well, thank you for the time, Ben.

Ben Stoll: Yeah, absolutely. Thank you, man.

Interviewer: We appreciate you taking the time out of your day.

Ben Stoll: Totally. It was fun.

[End of Audio]

Reflections on GenCon 2013

HexVault — Tue, 20 Aug 2013 17:37:46 +0000

Hex: Shards of Fate

The game was amazing! The Hex UI is little buggy in places, but mostly beautiful, very responsive, and a dream to play. I was still learning (i.e. making stupid mistakes) minor things about how certain cards had been implemented and needed to be used at the Con, but I’d imagine a solid day playing in the comfort of my own home would get through most of that process.

What about the decks? I really liked the Ruby Burn deck (fast and simple), the Bunnies (so many bunnies, so much carnage!), and the Sapphire Tempo deck (I ran, ran so far away…), but I ended up being beaten enough by the Inspire-based Diamond/Ruby deck that I’d bet that it was probably the best deck of those available to us (having originally been convinced Burn Baby Burn was the way to go).

Overall, I’d be happy if Alpha was the version of the software we got to play at GenCon. But, since we’re probably 4-5 weeks away from the Alpha build, I’m betting the UI and Game will be much improved again by the time we play again.

Hex: Shards of Fate

Cory & the Cryptozoic Team

Cory is the guy we saw in the Kickstarter video – all the time, and no matter whom he’s interacting with. It’s not an act – he’s just that genuine and committed to bringing the world the best games possible. We can all dream of being as happy as he seems to be in his career.

Cory gets a lot of the credit and limelight, but his team is incredible as well. Everyone, Cryptozoic staff and volunteers, was incredibly accommodating, and a pleasure to be around, even when things weren’t going as planned.

I’d especially like to thank Cory, Ben, and Dan for spending time with me so that I could interview them and share their thoughts with the people who didn’t get a chance to attend in person. Thank you!

Hex League Queue

I’ve said it before, I’ll say it again – the Hex League queue was actually one of the better parts of the Con for me. It was really great to meet so many people I’d “seen” on the Hex forums, and many I hadn’t. Every time I left the League area and then came back it was like an episode of “Cheers” – greeting folks by name and meeting new people as I made my way back to the end of the line. By Saturday afternoon I was spending time in the line just to talk to people, and frequently not actually playing.

Giveaway Winners

I was excited to do the giveaway and bring someone to GenCon who otherwise couldn’t have gone. As you probably know by now, I ended up bringing quite a few people from as far afield as Canada and HI. I had hoped I chose deserving individuals that were committed to building the Hex community and that I wouldn’t regret my choices. As it turned out I shouldn’t have worried. Funktion, BossHoss, and Jinuyr are incredible people, share our common interest in gaming, and have been and will be key contributors to the Hex community. I didn’t expect to gain so many new friendships by backing the Hex Kickstarter, but I’m happy I have.

Drogon Lord Dinner

Cory gave a speech at the Dragon Lord dinner. He thanked everyone for their contributions and recommitted himself and his team to making Hex the best it could possibly be. He presented everyone with posters of the Hex key art signed by the entire development team. He also gave us a USB drive with the Set 2 spoiler (Zeedu, the Sapphire Dragon) – I’d been expecting the USB drive (because of a picture I’d seen a few days earlier), but I thought the dragon was Uruunaz. Zeedu was a great surprise!

Cory also managed to bring tears to my eyes (which might have been caught on the official video) at one point during his speech – I wasn’t expecting to be recognized for my contributions to the community, I just want Hex to be as successful as possible.

I can’t even count the number of remarkable conversations we had with the development team at the dinner. Chris and Drew shared great info about the “arena” PVE content – it sounds epic and I can’t wait to play it. Also, I particularly enjoyed the conversation about guilds and teams, atopic that’s been discussed in the past day or so on the Hex forums.

Another great thing about the Con, and especially the dinner, was having the opportunity to talk about ideas with the developers. At one point in the night, and within a few minutes, Ben Stoll had taken down 3 different ideas (from Funktion, BossHoss and myself) that he seemed genuinely interested in trying to get into the game. In fact, 10 minutes later Cory sat down beside me and he’d clearly already talked to Ben about one of the ideas and said they were going to make it happen. It’s pretty clear that Cryptozoic is listening to our ideas ALL the time, and, whether or not they’re commenting on them or committing to them, they’re part of the data that’s used to continually improve Hex.

Elsewhere @ GenCon

I didn’t spend ALL of my time playing Hex and bugging the Cryptozoic folks. I managed to check out Myth (another Kickstarter I backed), finally tried True Dungeon (which I liked more than I expected), and got a game of Pandemic in on a seriously oversized version of the game. With the help of some passable instruction, I also played a number of other Cryptozoic games for the first time and had a great time!

Saying Goodbye

It turned out to be really tough to leave on Sunday. I really enjoyed GenCon this year, and much of that had to do with the people I’d met and gotten to know. I’m so glad I found the Hex Kickstarter – it’s going to be an interesting ride!

Hex Vault

Finally, thank you all for following my GenCon coverage over the past few days. I learned a lot about what I’d like to do for future Cons, and expect the coverage to get better and better as Hex matures. I’ll probably announce a GenCon-related giveaway tomorrow, but in the meantime you should enter the current giveaway!

Colin

GenCon 2013: Interview with Dan Clark, Lead Developer

HexVault — Mon, 19 Aug 2013 13:38:13 +0000

Dan Clark, Lead Developer

I got a chance to interview HEX Lead Developer Dan Clark at GenCon. You can catch the RAW UNEDITED (I’ll take a pass at editing it, transcribing it, and reducing the background exhibit hall noise once GenCon is over) audio on SoundCloud. We discussed a wide range of topics including:

Dan’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 game design-related areas:
- Novel Mechanics
- Not letting his personal preferences impact the overall design

I hope you’ve enjoyed the GenCon interviews as much as I did chatting with the CZE folks. I wanted to provide Hex-related information, but I was also interested in finding out about the guys behind the game. Hopefully I accomplished that.

I’m planning to post a summary of GenCon today or tomorrow – check back to read that. And, as always, enter our giveaway! It takes less than a minute and you could win an iPad, flights to/from HexCon, or Set 1 Boosters.

GenCon 2013: Interview with Ben Stoll, Game Designer

HexVault — Sun, 18 Aug 2013 14:31:36 +0000

Ben Stoll, Game Designer

I got a chance to have a conversation HEX Game Designer Ben Stoll at GenCon. You can catch the RAW UNEDITED (I’ll take a pass at editing it, transcribing it, and reducing the background exhibit hall noise once GenCon is over) audio on SoundCloud. I’m pretty quiet on a few of the questions because of how we had to set up the interview – it’ll be pretty obvious what the questions were though. We discussed a wide range of topics including:

Ben’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 game design-related areas:
- Resources, and what sets HEX apart
- Set 2 Sapphire Dragon
- The “ambush” mechanic
Motivations for working on HEX

We’ll have another interview from GenCon posted tomorrow! If you have specific questions for any of the CZE folks leave a comment and I’ll see what I can do to get you an answer.

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