------------------------------------------------------------------ Playability Podcast Episode 8: Rebecca Strang with Kathleen Mercury Run time: 24 minutes, 16 seconds Episode recorded by Rebecca Strang. Playability is produced by Mike Risley. Transcript edited by Mike Risley and Lauren Woolsey. ------------------------------------------------------------------ 0:06 Rebecca Strang hello and welcome to playability where we hold conversations at the crossroads of gameplay and accessibility. I'm your host Rebecca Strang and I'm joined today by Kathleen Mercury who is essentially a Swiss Army knife when it comes to the tabletop industry there's nothing she can't do and she's got the belt to prove it. She plays games, she designs games, she writes, and talks about games, and she's an award-winning teacher, and brings young minds into the fold every year when she teaches board game design to middle schoolers and makes design itself more accessible. Which is what we're going to talk about today. So, welcome to the show Kathleen. 0:45 Kathleen Mercury I have to tell you that intro is so incredibly nice that Kathleen sounds amazing. 0:54 Rebecca Strang So yeah, let's drop it right into it. When you're thinking about, you know, designing games, and the game industry, what are some of the barriers that you've seen that can be problematic? 1:07 Kathleen Mercury Yeah. So, I'm actually pretty fortunate I think and that, you know, I got into gaming on my own as a gamer. I think that was one thing that sometimes, you know, having to explain to people that, you know, I'm not here because I'm the girlfriend of I'm actually a gamer you know. There's a little always a little bit about that sometimes I think. I think a lot of women have experienced that when they game, or even if you come in as the girlfriend of that doesn't mean that you're not a good gamer in your own right, and so a lot of my best friends in the gaming industry are women gamers, and I've been very careful to cultivate those friendships because it's nice to have other people who, you know, just can kind of understand where you've coming from from that sort of thing. But I also have to say that I think I've been really really fortunate because I'm a sort of gregarious outgoing sort of person and I love meeting and talking to people. My friend Morgan calls me a Slither-Puff. You know crafty cunning but yet I love people and what's actually really really suits me in gaming. You know like I want to play against you and I want to figure this out and I want to beat you and I wouldn't destroy you but I would have so much fun with you while we're doing it, you know, and I hope you're having fun with me while we're doing it too, you know, and we're so friends afterwards. 2:31 Kathleen Mercury So , um but the one thing I have to say is, I think especially as I've been involved in gaming I'm just fascinated by design it's just something that from when I met my very first game designer I was like what you made that because I didn't realize how you know small the industry really is and it's just a question of me being super nosy and asking lots of questions and meeting lots of people that as I've done more and more because it really is an industry of relationships that I haven't had a lot of the barriers I think that some might, and I think what people could maybe learn from this from my own limited shallow narrow range of experiences is you know one what I just said it's a business of relationships and knowing people. And knowing who you want to work with, and knowing what companies do. A lot of that kind of just getting involved aspect has helped to where you know I can talk with people and they'll say you know I want to design a game with you or we should work on a project together and I'm always like really me you know because I just you know I just didn't let anything stop me as far as I just wanted to do this I just wanted to figure this out. And there's a lot of recognition I think amongst people in the industry to diversify the designers they have, content creators they have, and so in a lot of ways I think I've definitely had a lot more opportunities to come my way because I'm a woman in the industry because people are wanting to diversify then maybe other guys have had you know because there are just there are a lot of guy designers out there and there aren't that many women designers out there so I think I've been really lucky in that regard. But I think you can also unpack some of the thing I'm saying as far as you know having to like push in if you're not comfortable with that, you know. If you're not comfortable talking with other people and approaching things and I'm sort of bull in the china shop. 4:12 Rebecca Strang Okay yeah, I know. First for people who may be more shy or not as outgoing it can be overwhelming to look at this industry and the people that are in there and think like how am I going to get my game to even stand and be recognized to against everything? 4:27 Kathleen Mercury Right? No, that's a hundred percent true, and honestly like I remember my first game convention I went to and I remember being really really shy because I..., you know, I want to know the lay of the land. This is a new world, you know. I want to know what kind of the norms are like, what the culture is, how people conduct themselves, and so just to go up to somebody and say, "Hey, let's play game." I wasn't comfortable with that because I hadn't really been gaming that long, and when I was a new gamer and you're always learning new rules, and I'm always frustrated trying to like remember everything, and put it all together that I didn't often want to play with new people I didn't know because I didn't want to hold up the game or embarrass myself, you know? Like, so, I totally get it. I totally totally get that, but I think that for me remembering those days, and now looking back saying, "You know what? You could have, you know, sat down at tables say, 'Hey, let's play game!' or people had a players wanted flag to sit down and play game," but what I ended up doing was I ended up hanging out, this is a Geekway to the West, like eight nine years ago now, but I remember hanging out at the "Play-to-Win" table where you could play games, and if you played them your name went on a card and somebody came home with a game, and I won two games that year just because that's where I right hung out because I knew people were looking for games there, and I was like hey you wanna play a game? Cool, let's play game. 5:39 Rebecca Strang That's awesome! Yeah, and I think it's becoming a little easier to be able to put yourself out there. Because, there's a lot more groups that are popping up. Even on some of the social media. You know, there's a few groups out there specifically for women: The Analog Gamer Girls, and World of Women, and then there's A Seat at the Table, and The Board Game Spotlight, and all of those groups are super welcoming and great places to just start talking to people and just get your name out there. 6:02 Kathleen Mercury Yeah, and I think, you know, it's one of those things where luck favors the bold in some ways, you know, and I think in some ways, like I understand being shy, I understand being hesitant, I have friends who have pretty significant social anxiety, and I get that and I understand it. And the only thing I can say though is, you know, and I don't mean this in a terrible harsh way, but the world doesn't care, you know. That we all have our own individual, you know, "Shakespearean Flaws" that we create for ourselves, we struggle against, and we all have to figure out how best to overcome them, you know? I mean, I tend to act very quickly; I tend to act very rashly, you know? It takes me a minute to like stop, you know, and sit back, and listen to what people are telling you. You know, we all have different things that we sort of struggle with, and so I think when it comes to all of the different kind of internal barriers that we can put up for ourselves. You've got to move past it, you know. You've got to move past it and just say to yourself, "You know, I'm gonna sit down at this table and I'm gonna have publishers at the speed-dating event come and look at my game," and you know the first time I did it was totally nerve-wracking. Afterwards, I was almost euphoric cuz it was so much fun, you know, and I think that's the thing. It's like, everybody's nervous the first time you do something you know to me, but nothing ventured nothing gained, you know. You've got to take risks if you want to have any type of achievement, any type of a reward, and if you're a woman in the industry you don't need to say, "Sorry," for anything. If you're brand-new as a designer you don't need to apologize, you know. You need to put your game on the table because, trust me, I've seen so much worse. Mine probably included in that, and I'm not kidding, you know. So, just, you can't be afraid to just try and put it out there, you know. Even if you say, "Okay, I'm gonna set up an appointment with one publisher at a con. Just to like dip my toe," and whatever it is, you know, do it! Because, at the end of day they don't care either. What they want are fun games and if you bring a really cool fun game to the table, you know, a lot of the other stuff can quickly fall away once you start working together and they give you money, definitely, and it also helps like I said earlier if you're... if you're developing those connections with other people in the industry that can help boost you up, and give you confidence, and you can test your game out on other people before you throw it at a publisher absolutely should do that. You absolutely should do that, you know. But, that's one thing I think sometimes it's like I was on the podcast Our Turn and we were talking about "Impostor Syndrome" and part of the reason why I was on it was I was like, you know, I don't really have that. I just do stuff and I assume it'll work out, and itdoesn't always work out but I always have fun in the process, you know. But one of the things I found was that men will apply for a job if they're "70 percent qualified." Women will apply for the same job if they're "a hundred percent qualified," and I think that says something about how we, as women, especially when we're working in a field that maybe not traditionally heavily populated by women, much like perhaps gaming, that we feel like we need to apologize for that missing 30%, or even that hundred percent. That we still feel like that 100 percent isn't good enough, you know, and that even at a hundred percent may not actually be the right person for the job and the thing is at the end of the day no one cares. And I don't, God I sound like such a jerk, I sound like a real Slytherin, but... but... but the thing is, is you know, put your game out there! Show it and see what happens. Cuz, that's all that can happen, you know what I mean? Like, and you know, publishers can say "Yes." They can say "No." They can say, "Make these changes." There's all different kinds of responses that people can make, but you won't ever know unless you say to yourself, "Hey! Kathleen (or insert your name here) you know the worst that's gonna happen is they're gonna say, 'No' and the best are gonna happen is they're gonna want to make your game." So, really how can it be a failure if you just put yourself out there to do it? 9:58 Rebecca Strang Right, and even if they say, "No," you usually walk away with some good tips on what you can do to eventually get it to a "Yes." 10:05 Kathleen Mercury Oh yeah. Absolutely! I mean, do your homework. Don't try to pitch a wargame to Indie Boards and Cards. Because, they're not gonna make it, you know. And it's funny cuz talking with friends who are publishers who say, "You wouldn't believe how often people say, 'Well, I know you don't do this, but you should really check this out!'" It's like, no we don't do that, you know what I mean? It's like asking, you know, Family Circle to published nudes now that Playboy, I don't know, I think they're just online, I don't know, but you know what I mean? It's like Family Circle's not going to do that even if it's tastefully done. You know what I mean? Know the publisher. Know the industry. And the more you do that to, then they're like, "Oh, this person gets it! This person understands! They know how this works." Which means that they'll have a better sense of trusting you when it comes to working with you in the future. 10:54 Rebecca Strang Yeah and a lot of that, just you've got to be brave and fail and know that that's gonna happen, and I know that you embrace that as well in your classroom with your kids. So, can you talk a little bit about how you bring board game design to the classroom? 11:08 Kathleen Mercury yeah! I've been doing this for about 11 years, something like that, and I went to a conference on gifted education and that's what I teach gifted kids in Missouri and I went to a session on board games and I was like oh yeah I love Clue as a kid, you know, I love board games and so I went, and this one was talking about -- this is the whole story I should probably abbreviate it -- but basically how every gifted classroom needed Stratego and Stratego is the only game that every gifted classroom needs blah blah blah and I'm like I don't know Stratego, and the reason why didn't know Stratego is because I have sisters, three of them, and Stratego was a boy game so long story short I got into gaming, I start playing games, I start playing games for us like you know my students could make these and definitely 100% kind of overly ambitious as far as maybe their abilities or more probably more specifically my ability to get them there but learning a lot a ton all along the way, doing everything from the beginning where they'd have to do like a lot of writing, or I'd have them spend way too much time developing initial prototypes, whereas now you know I embrace rapid iteration you know, oh my gosh, failing fast you know fast and cheap prototyping you know all these different things and I teach my kids game design, you know: they develop a prototype, they iterate it four times over the course of our development phase, and the games are markedly better at the end. All of that is good, all that is true, but the thing that I really do is I really teach my kids what failure is. 12:34 Kathleen Mercury A lot of my students have never really struggled in school they are very used to a lot of objective kind of assessments, where you know you get the right answer, you get a hundred percent -- maybe even a hundred and four percent there's extra credit -- they're very very used to that that there is a right answer and teaching kids to design games means the opposite. It means teaching them what failure is, it means teaching them what struggling is, and teaching them how to persist. Because most the time, they get a class project, they do the project, they turned in they get a good grade, they move on to the next thing. This is make a really bad project, they play test it, they get a lot of feedback, and then that project comes back to haunt them over and over and over again, you know, and that's the thing like even for myself I know that if I'm wanting to start designing a new game it means, am I ready to feel with this a lot? Do I love this idea so much that I want to keep hanging out with it while we go through the forest and the mountain gorges and the fjords and the desert, so my willing that like go do I like this idea so much that I want to go there? And the answer, you know, if I stick with it is a yes, you know, because I see where all of those different areas -- the mountains, the gorges, the rivers, the deserts -- can all teach me something different about the game and how it works if I'm willing to embrace that journey. 13:51 Kathleen Mercury And this sounds really really nice and I'm kind of proud of myself for coming up with it, but it's true you know, for my students teaching them to put unfinished not-great work in front of their peers, to listen to feedback, to incorporate that feedback, to work on the same thing over and over and over again -- they've never had anything like this and it teaches them so much about themselves. It teaches them a lot about learning from others and trusting others, and it's always interesting, it's always different, I'm always trying to improve things to make it better myself and because especially when they fail, like really like if they feel like they're failures then I do very much so and that's always the struggle is how do I get them to go through this process of failing and feel like a success and that's very very hard to do and I am not always successful. 14:54 Rebecca Strang Well ,and you have them put it right out there, too, because you -- I know you've had them post on the BoardGameGeek forums, too, are you still doing that with them? 14:57 Kathleen Mercury Yeah, so this semester the school year just turned out weird, I'm actually not teaching game design this semester I do seventh and eighth grade gifted, so this semester I only have eighth grade and next semester I will only have all seventh grade and so I am super excited -- one it was kind of nice actually taking this break because I've kind of let some ideas percolate, whereas if I just kind of started this school year I'd be probably back to doing more or less same ol same ol or it's just harder, you know, there's so many things coming after you like undergo significant you know curricular changes -- but I'm really excited that also next semester this is the only thing that I'll have to focus on, and so in doing so, really thinking about my students working what they do, because you know one of the things I love is that though it's as you were saying at the end of the semester I make a geek list and we post pictures of the kids games and descriptions and gamers publishers designers from all over the world ask questions, make comments, I post their responses, and the kids go from school project to real world idea, real content that they're putting out there, I mean it's absolutely phenomenal. I mean they go from feeling like, oh gosh like we've been working on this for so long -- all it takes is one person to say I would totally buy this, and it's just like a 180, you know, and so it's really really cool. 16:09 Kathleen Mercury And so for this year because I have additional time, you know, in terms of thinking about how I want to do things -- I'm actually going to have the kids make their games print and play! So not just putting a picture in a description of the game, but actually, we're gonna be putting their rules and the prototype online [Rebecca: oh, that’s cool, yeah] so that, yeah, it'll be a Google Doc right? So you'll have in the Google Doc, you know, you'll have to you know the rules you'll have like all the part you know this board to print out, so they'll have to figure out you know that kind of rudimentary sort of graphic design, I'm sure I have kids who, I know I have kids who do like AutoCAD and stuff so maybe some formats will be different. But I'm really excited because this really is taking their ideas and really putting them out there into the world and when we do that, at least especially even historically, you know, some games get more likes than others, some games get more comments than others, some games get a lot more attention than others, and I tell the kids, I'm like you know, this is a marketplace of ideas and this is what happens when you put things out there, you want to be the best, you want to be the one with the most likes, the most whatever, but that's not realistic. [Rebecca: Mm-hmm.] But the thing too is like, they know sometimes, sometimes BGG gets it wrong, or there'll be a really amazing game but just in terms of how the picture looks, or the description maybe, the kids, you know it ‘cause a lot of games can sound cool even though they're kind of problematic sometimes you know hmm but generally speaking the better games tend to get the better responses and the kids are really supportive of each other too, so that's good. 17:42 Rebecca Strange Have you ever had any of your kids actually follow through and try to get something published yet? 17:45 Kathleen Mercury Sort of, you know, it takes a lot long to develop a game than what we have, and so I've had kids take games to Geekway to the West, the local game convention, I've had publishers meet with them, and one game actually got picked up for consideration, but then the company was sold and then sold again and at that point it has more days, like I don't know what we're gonna do with this cute kid’s game, which is unfortunate because it was a solid game asymmetrical two-player game was really cool and well-balanced it worked. So that's the closest, but I don't really push that, um, because it takes so much work to get there and then you're talking about setting up meetings and sell sheets and and you would have to like -- for a kid to, you know, I mean it's like an amateur, you know, going to bat in a world, in a major league baseball game, and hitting a home run, you know what I mean, even if they're a tall kid with lots of muscles and stuff like that, I mean that's just a huge jump in talent and skill and hard work and they're just not there yet. But I will say, their ideas are really really innovative, so even if games themselves haven't actually gotten published, the work is there, and that's something that excites me about doing this as print and play because their games are more or less going to be published, so we're kind of skipping that step, you know, and we're just gonna put them out there and we'll see what happens. I'm super excited about it! 19:10 Rebecca Strang That is really exciting! I will definitely look forward to seeing those, it'll be fun to do some of those, we do a lot of print and play stuff here at our house, so [Kathleen: cool!] we'll definitely do that. 19:18 Kathleen Mercury I appreciate that! I mean it's definitely, the rules are gonna have to be good, you know what I mean? But I think, too, I'm gonna let them work with a partner, which for me is like monumental, and so hopefully with two sets of eyes, two kids working on it, we'll get some really amazing stuff going and I'm super excited. 19:31 Rebecca Strang Awesome! yeah you should be, that's really awesome. And so if you had to pick one thing, what's your favorite thing about teaching board game design to these middle schoolers? 19:40 Kathleen Mercury Making kids better gamers. Giving kids access to better games, you know. A lot of them, I mean there's two, I guess, so there's that but then also just like the overall kind of, you know, process of design, that process of struggle and failure and persevering, I mean that's huge honestly. I mean, [Rebecca: yeah] it should -- all kids, all adults, you know, should take on open-ended design challenges -- I don't know where this is going, um, but I think if nothing els,e even on a temporary sort of basis, is I like the fact that a lot of them have their so little gaming literacy when it comes to like what's out there. They only know a very narrow range of kind of big box store kind of kid games, and so the fact that I can get them into other games, better games that they end up buying and playing with their families -- I have sold a lot of games as a result of kids play them in my classroom! I always joke like if I had a dollar for every game that a kid bought in my classroom might have about four hundred dollars. [Both laugh] That number realistically is probably more honestly, 20:42 Kathleen Mercury Um, but anyway, like giving them access to better forms of gaming so that when they're with their friends in middle school, in high school, that they can play really good board games and hopefully become better gamers in general, stick with gaming, go to gaming conventions, and just be part of the gaming community -- because I think that's the other thing too when it comes to what you're talking about accessibility. My classes are 50/50 male/female, actually that's not true because I have some students who consider themselves non-binary and, you know, other different permutations of gender which I think is super cool that middle school, they're comfortable and supported to express that. [Rebecca: definitely, yeah] But I have kids whose families come from all over the world, kids who speak multiple languages, you know, kids whose cultures at home can be very different than their culture at school, so when we're talking about, you know, the gaming community -- and people tending to think that it's really homogeneous -- I would just like to say that's not what I have coming up. 21:34 Kathleen Mercury And I'm really proud of the fact that I'm getting so many different kids into gaming, and they're getting their friends into gaming, and I think that's how we make change too, it's not just, you know, on the short term of like, over what, you know, *we're* trying to do which is, you know, broaden the field, but you know broadening the field for others to come the way, you know, so because there's an expression “pioneers get shot, settlers get the land,” and I honestly feel like I've taken many shots, I know other women in the industry who definitely have. But if I'm still part of that wave of getting women into the industry so that more women can come up and just be part of it and it's no longer a novelty, but it's just like, hey, then and that's I think we're in a lot of ways, we're kind of there -- maybe more so than I think, maybe less so than I think -- but that's super important to me. 22:22 Rebecca Strang Awesome! And so for people who would like to follow up and check out these geek lists and find out what you're up to, where can everybody find you online? 22:30 Kathleen Mercury Yeah, and I hope if you're interested that you do contact me because I love love love working and helping people use games in the classroom, or however, you know, you want to you know talk about games anything at all. I have a podcast -- so here's how you get ahold of me [Rebecca: laughs] so Kathleen Mercury dot com is the name of my website, and I put all my game design teaching resources on there for free. So if you're looking to teach game design, I have a short quick game workshop that can take a few hours, to a couple weeks, all the way to like every single resource for my big semester-long game design class, which is huge. So if you're looking for that, and people all over the world are using it which is really cool, and I'm always happy to help people talk with people about anything. And then, you can also find me on Twitter I'm @mmmmmmmercury, mercury with 7 M’s, and I also co-host the podcast Games in Schools and Libraries, so if people want to know more about games and schools and libraries, obviously, or you just like hearing the melodious sound of my voice, head to inverse genius slash games in schools and libraries or whatever the URL is, something like that. 23:29 Rebecca Strang Awesome well thank you so much for talking with me today [Background music starts here to the end] and I know myself I will definitely check out your website as I'm doing gaming and libraries and everything so [Kathleen: *garbled* and it’s free!] Great! Well, um, I hope everybody's had a great time listening to this episode. If you have any questions or comments you would like to share with us, please email us at playability pod at gmail dot com or find us on major social media platforms at playabilitypod, thanks again for listening, I hope this episode helps you play with a new perspective.