Rob Alvarez Bucholska
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Beyond Points & Badges: How James Portnow Designs Intrinsic Engagement | Episode 426

 

If you’re considering gamification for engagement, retention, or loyalty, I’m happy to compare options with you: professorgame.com/chat

What if gamification isn’t about rewards at all? James Portnow joins the Professor Game Podcast to explain why intrinsic engagement, thoughtful iteration, and strong design goals matter more than mechanics. From YouTube education to tabletop games, this conversation is packed with insights on building experiences people truly care about.

James Portnow is a Game Designer by trade, who’s worked on games ranging from the Call of Duty Series to League of Legends to Farmville. His latest project, Cyberpunk Legends (the official Cyberpunk co-op card game), Kickstarted for over a million dollars, putting it in the top 1% of kickstarters ever created. He is also the creator of one of the most popular YouTube channels on history, Extra History. He’s spoken at universities and corporations around the world and at conferences ranging from GDC to PAX to SXSW. He’s been quoted in the New York Times and Time Magazine, published by Oxford University Press and has taught at the Masters and Bachelor’s level.

Rob Alvarez is Head of Engagement Strategy, Europe at The Octalysis Group (TOG), a leading gamification and behavioral design consultancy. A globally recognized gamification strategist and TEDx speaker, he founded and hosts Professor Game, the #1 gamification podcast, and has interviewed hundreds of global experts. He designs evidence-based engagement systems that drive motivation, loyalty, and results, and teaches LEGO® SERIOUS PLAY® and gamification at top institutions including IE Business School, EFMD, and EBS University across Europe, the Americas, and Asia.

 

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Lets’s do stuff together!

Looking forward to reading or hearing from you,

Rob

 

Full episode transcription (AI Generated)

James Portnow (00:00)
This isn’t about point systems or leveling. Those things are the path to abject failure. Anyone putting those sort of gamification in their things is just there to part you from your money. The real key is finding things that help us intrinsically engage that allow you to deliver in an engaging way.

Rob (00:19)
Hey and welcome to Professor Game and yes, we will be sharing many secrets from James Portnall of extra credits and extra history. This is Professor Game. It’s a show where we explore how games, gamification, strategies around game and game design help us boost things like engagement, multiply retention, build stronger communities and make a positive impact in the world and in our businesses. I’m Rob.

I’m a coach at Professor Game, I’m the head of engagement strategy Europe at the Otelis group, which is, you know, the leading gamification consultancy in the world and a professor of gamification game based solutions at IE Business School, EFMD, EBS University and many other places around the world. And before we dive into today’s conversation, if you’re struggling with retention, engagement in your business and want to turn that around, we’ve got you covered.

You can go ahead and grab a free chat with me right away just by clicking on the link in the description. So Engagers, welcome back to another episode of the Professor Game Podcast. And we have a special guest today. We have James, but James, we need to know, are you prepared to engage?

James Portnow (01:35)
I mean, if you convinced me to.

Rob (01:39)
Let’s do this. We have James Portnow today who’s a game designer by trade, who’s worked on games from the Call of Duty series to League of Legends to Farmville. One of his latest projects, Cyberpunk Legends, the official cyberpunk co-op card game, kickstarted for over a million dollars, putting it in the top 1 % of kickstarters ever to be created. He’s also the creator of the most popular YouTube channels on history, Extra History.

And he’s spoken at universities and corporations around the world and at conferences ranging from GDC, PACS and South by Southwest. He’s been in court in the New York Times, The Times Magazine, published by Oxford University Press and has taught at the masters and bachelor’s level. James, I’m guessing that’s pretty comprehensive, but is there anything that we’re missing that we should know before we take it from here?

James Portnow (02:29)
No, I appreciate the intro. It does sound ridiculous when you actually say it aloud. ⁓ But no, I think that is more than I deserve.

Rob (02:42)
Fantastic work out there by James. So James, if we were to follow you around and I know it’s like 1 a.m. for you right now, but in a normal day, in a regular day, what would it look like? Like what would we feel like? What were the things that you’d be doing? We’d be doing.

James Portnow (02:58)
I I wish I could say game design things, but honestly, I mean, there isn’t really a regular day at this point. ⁓ And right now, the truth is most of my time is actually occupied doing things like, you know, business side stuff, arranging license deals, working with manufacturers, facilitating shipping. ⁓ And you know, when I do get to design, it is over a cup of tea at this time at night. So.

Rob (03:27)
That makes sense. That makes sense. all sorts of things that have to get sorted. ⁓ So yeah, I love it. I love it. So James, let’s dive right in, right? Because as we know in the games industry, one of the big things that we learn from games is how we learn and we iterate quickly from failure. So, you know, calling it failure is sometimes debatable for some people, but if we were to call it that way, or a first attempt at learning, what would be one of those times when, you know, where you were trying to do something in a game and, you know, things just didn’t work?

or consulting through the game strategies you have. And things just didn’t work. We want to be there, live that story as long as it doesn’t destroy any NDAs that you have in between, and see what lessons we can learn from that. So go ahead and reveal what you can wherever you must.

James Portnow (04:14)
That’s a great question, right? And you’re absolutely right. ⁓ I can actually talk about a recent one. I don’t know where it falls on the list, but when building Cyberpunk Legends, I had originally had this sort of big clunky math based system, similar to Magic the Gathering. But I realized once I got it in my hands and play tested it, right? Like I got it. I took some magic cards, slapped some…

⁓ sticky notes on them, got it ready to play test as fast as I could. And as soon as I put it in front of me, I realized that it didn’t really capture the feel of Night City. And one of my design goals with this game was to create a game that you could learn in 10 minutes or less. And it wasn’t doing that either. So I ripped the whole thing out, right? I gutted the game and started again. But it was so important for me to build that system because by building that system, by putting in the, you know, obvious thing,

I learned an important lesson. I learned what the game shouldn’t be. And that’s enormously valuable, right? Because you always have the obvious answer in front of you when you’re designing anything, there’s something that will immediately jump to mind, something that’s the the thing that you see everywhere else. And it’s good, right? That thing is often right, you should try it. That’s why it’s obvious, right? ⁓ But you always also have to explore past that first or second or even third idea. Because very often the obvious answer

Is it the best one? And, ⁓ you know, some of your listeners may have heard my motto in extra credits, ⁓ fail faster. And I mean it, right? I think that’s how we get to good. We tear through those first ideas. We make sure we’re not wedded to them. Right. And we weigh them against what else could be, ⁓ because as a designer, you shouldn’t ever be embarrassed about being wrong. you should about staying wrong.

But never about being wrong.

Rob (06:13)
That makes sense. love it. I completely agree. think it’s a beautiful thing that the industry and the thinking behind this is leading us that way. Because I also feel that society in general, we have been led to believe that, you know, having a failure is sort of final. It’s fatal. It’s going to mark you. You’re going to have, ⁓ this person failed in your forehead forever and nobody will hire you. Nobody will want to be your friend, you know? And it’s quite the opposite.

James Portnow (06:41)
I think actually one of the big struggles of the modern world, Like, because you are continuously under observation, right? Because everything goes on the permanent record, because the internet’s out there, because everyone has a camera all the time. We’ve become afraid of being wrong, right? We’re taught to be afraid of being wrong. And not being willing to admit you’re wrong causes problems just all across society, right? So within our company,

That’s one of the big ⁓ parts of the culture that we try and encourage is just that there is no cost for ever admitting that you were wrong about something, Realizing you were wrong and hiding it, there is a cost for it, right? Because that happens a lot because we’re trained to do that. But admitting that you’re wrong allows us to get to right faster. And so I think as a society, as humanity, we need to get back to the point where that’s actually okay.

Rob (07:41)
Absolutely agree. Absolutely agree. let’s turn it around. I know you’ve been involved in many successes as well. let’s hear a story about a time when things did go right. again, the first time or the 10th time or the 100th time, it doesn’t matter. We’re going to be there with you and maybe see some of the success factors you could say like, you know, this went well, I think, or we’ve seen because of these or those things.

James Portnow (08:04)
So there’s lots of angles I could take on that, but if we’re talking about importing sort of game ideas outside the realm of game, I think it’s probably extra history. You mentioned the fact that I have a YouTube show, the YouTube show has, you know, four and a half million subs on it or whatever. And it really started because I was working on it I was asking myself, you know,

Well, I’ve learned all these things, these engagement techniques from building games. And so how can we bring it to something beyond games, right? How can we use those same techniques to teach history and get people who otherwise might not have been engaged with history ⁓ involved and interested in it, right? And to me, the key thing is like, this isn’t about point systems or leveling bars, right? ⁓ Those things are the path to abject failure.

⁓ anyone putting those sort of gamification in their things is just there to part you from your money. ⁓ the real key to me is finding things that help us intrinsically engage with what we’re being offered, right? ⁓ finding the things that allow you to deliver the material in an engaging way, using things like our understandings of interest curve and flow and story structure that we’ve built up over certainly the last thousand years, but in

intensely over the last like 150 years of pop culture, right? ⁓ We poured enormous resources into studying these things and finding places to use them outside just entertainment I think has immense value

Rob (09:49)
Absolutely, absolutely. what would you say are there, you know, of course your channel is humongous. You build your channels all over. You still have the extra credits as well, right?

James Portnow (09:59)
Yeah, I think that’s like 500k or something like we split the channel. So and unfortunately, I still have the time to write as many extra credits as I used to. So that one is ticking along slowly. But yeah, I think that’s like 500 ish K.

Rob (10:15)
So, you you’ve built all that up with all those techniques and all that stuff you’ve been working on. ⁓ there, you know, do you have, I don’t want to say tips, because it’s not about somebody else also building a great channel. But what would you say sort of what’s the thinking behind it? Because you were talking precisely about how, what you’ve learned from games, not talking just about extrinsic motivators. What are some of the intrinsic stuff that’s been great? Among others, the storytelling, like I would like to, you know, if there’s anything you would say like, you know, when you’re considering creating something.

Just, you know, take care of this and everything will be at least better. Not perfect, but at least better.

James Portnow (10:51)
I mean, in terms of creating stuff, right, I could, we could go on a whole other tangent. We could do an entire podcast on, there’s actually a lecture I often give to corporations about ideation and the checks you should do against whether or not like this is the right idea to pursue. Some of the ones that I see, there’s a lot of them, but some of the ones I see often creators,

sometimes miss is one, like, is there a hole there? Is there a market hole for lack of a better term? Right? Is there something because if I was to create a D &D Let’s Play today, D &D Let’s Play is like D &D actual plays are awesome. That space is already all huge, just absorbed, right? It’s completely taken. It’s like when everybody was building the MMO or building a shooter, trying to compete in that space, you really have got to have something remarkable. And even then you have to have an enormous

set of resources behind you to do these things. so figure out something that is perhaps less occupied that you can find a underserved audience for. then the other key is always with big game companies I talk about is your team, the right team for it, but are you the right person for this? Right? Don’t just do again, I see people who

go into doing YouTube or Twitch or what have you ⁓ because they want to be famous or they want to be popular or whatever and not because they want to do the thing itself. ⁓ Sorry, I’ll have to forgive me. I’m losing some headphones. ⁓ But really the problem there to me always is if you’re doing something because you want the external thing, it’s really hard to keep that motivation up.

Right. Um, I remember, you know, when I was, when I was young and picked up a guitar, it wasn’t because any of us want to be rock stars. That would have been lovely. Right. But it was because we all wanted to jam together in the basement. Um, and that was what we really going for. And so doing the thing itself, and then you have to ask yourself like, do I bring any specialized knowledge? Right. Um, we see all the people who, you know, make a YouTube channel where

they’re talking about the intricacies of the law or talking about like marine biology or whatever. And we see some huge channels there. You don’t have to do the Mr. Beast thing. You don’t have to do the PewDiePie thing. You shouldn’t jump on the thing that is popular. You should do the thing that you are uniquely good at, that you provide something that nobody else can give to that audience. for creators, that would be my two cents.

Rob (13:44)
Finding your space for sure. love it. James, when you’re facing a new project, right? I don’t know if a game and something more for corporates is similar or not. So you don’t feel free to decide where you want to go. I’m guessing that you have some sort of process, just like in general game design has some processes. I don’t know if you follow exactly that. You have your own thing.

Could you give us, know, sort of a gist of what does that look like? you know, I’m starting this. What is it that I do? I start by doing this and I go on to this, this, this and that. And I’m guessing of course failing and iterating is a central part to that.

James Portnow (14:21)
It is a huge part of it, but this is a great question. As I said, it would, this could be an hour long by itself with no problem. ⁓ biggest things for me, ⁓ one, I do always start with my list of like, why should I do this? Why am I the right person to do this? ⁓ And then after that list, I set out some design goals for myself. You can do, there’s a lot of different approaches, but I sort of try and figure out.

Are there design objectives for that game? Because it’s very hard to create from a blank slate, right? We’ve all had that moment where we face a blank piece of paper, ⁓ a blank word doc, whatever, and it is intimidating. And so when I talked earlier about, you know, wanting Cyberpunk Legends to be 10 minutes to learn, by having that design goal, by putting those constraints on myself in the, at the outset, every choice I could make after that,

I had something to refer to. could make a choice and then go ask myself, okay, does this make it harder or easier to learn in 10 minutes? And I had a number of these, right? But I could keep referencing against them and it made it much easier to determine whether or not my choices were correct for what I was trying to do, right? Because otherwise you’re just kind of wandering off the blind. And then when I am designing game, I…

We talked about rapidly iterating. try and get it in front of people as early as possible, but iteration happens way earlier than you think. Like, I know a lot of people are scared that folks won’t understand their ideas and so have to sort of wait to show it to people until we are at the point where, know, it’s like the thing that I really wanted to show everybody. But the problem is, if you’re wrong by that point, you probably can’t go back and fix it.

⁓ so I always talk about iteration begins at telling your friends, right? And not only your friends, but grab random people, like grab people who are not invested in telling you, yeah, that sounds awesome. And tell them about this thing and see what they think. Right. ⁓ because I’m also a believer that if somebody else can build it better and faster than me, well, go for it. Right. I’m not worried about the security side for my own stuff. and.

I will also iterate like when I write out the original design doc, I am very good at self delusion. I am very good at taking a word doc, writing it, and then I will put it away for a day or two and I’ll come back to it. And I will tell myself that this was written by, you know, a junior employer, this was submitted anonymously or whatever.

⁓ And I’ll go through and redline it right? I’ll be like, this is terrible. This is a stupid idea. This is awful, right ⁓ and Just try and look at things from sort of an outside perspective, right? Try and put yourself outside your own work to be able to start iterating on it well before you ever invest time in getting a Actual product to made if that makes sense

Rob (17:37)
Makes a lot of sense actually. And I love that, you know, sort of, you know, that this was not written by me so I can just critique it as if I’m seeing it for the first time. And, you know, that’s your first, your first iteration, right? Your first test player is yourself. And when you can do that, you know, it can work wonders, I’m sure. And at least it saves you time the next one, you know, when you tell a friend, it’s like, you know, I’m thinking about this.

James Portnow (18:02)
Well, and this is the thing that’s wild to me, very often we’ll hit ideas. I mean, I’m sure you’ve seen them in games and other things where you hit an idea that should have died in the meeting, right? Like how did six people ever look at this idea and all say yes? ⁓ It happened because a lot of people were afraid of saying no, right? ⁓ And so we also always try in meetings and all these other things like…

Show me the holes in this thing, right? Express when you think something is bad because the rest of your company should also be a useful iteration point. If you can’t tell people outside the company, well, you guys should be talking about this thing and talking through how it will actually play out. And there’s a lot that you’ll be able to actually start iterating on again before you put a line of code down, before you commit to building an art asset.

Rob (18:59)
Yeah, I always use the example of, and this is actually something that happened is, you know, had this client came in and said, oh yeah, you know, I want to use your game design strategies, what not. And I saw this fantastic thing somewhere else, right? I saw they had a racing car game and they were competing and they had these leaderboards and they were all, you know, like a super competitive culture and people were doing so much better. So, yeah, you know, it sounds interesting. I don’t know, you what’s the context of that? You know, what’s your context, right?

And he said, well, these are research scientists. ⁓ and you feel that, you know, cutthroat competition is when it was going to drive these, these scientists rather than something like, I don’t know, you know, cooperation, you know, sort of building on each other’s papers, research, that kind of thing. You know, so, you know, of course I didn’t say it that way because that just makes the other person sound stupid, but you know, that was exactly what my mind was saying. Like, are you really telling me this?

So I found a way to say it better, right? But you know, you just can’t do this. Well, let’s do some research and see if your people are competitive. You know, there’s ways to say it, but you always have to, even if it’s your client, even if it’s your boss, better find a way to say it because if then it goes out, your name is going to be there as well. And you’re going to be part of the failure that is not going well. So a hundred percent, I can agree more with that.

James Portnow (20:20)
If you feel like you can’t say it, is this the right gig for you? Right? Like, what am I even doing there if we can’t bring up the things that aren’t good? And why do I have, why do I have employees if not to tell me when I’m off the rails? Right? ⁓ And so I do, I do think that that’s really important. If you ever feel like you’re in a situation where you really can’t do that.

You might take a good hard look at why you’re there and whether you want to stay there.

Rob (20:54)
And it’s, you know, also sort of, I understand also the other side where it’s like, well, I’m working maybe in a big name company or there’s, you know, I basically came to this company because I admire this person so much. Right. And, or this person is like in this huge pedestal. And even though there might be, you know, sort of they are of course normal humans, but they also behave, they don’t behave like, I’m in this pedestal, you can’t reach me. But then sometimes it’s sort of, there’s this feeling like, oh, this person just knows more than me. I’m sure I’m not seeing something. It’s like, no, no, no, no, no.

And it’s hard to build that culture when you have that kind of, you know, person. No, no, you know, it’s fine. I’m here, whatever, but you know, we have to talk. And I’ve built all of this because there are other people as well that help me find those blind spots. And we’re not, I don’t think there’s anybody who has no blind spots at all. Right. That’s, that’s pretty much impossible.

James Portnow (21:43)
One of the first assignments I give my junior designers is usually to take some work that I’ve done and tell me what’s wrong, right? Tell me what I did wrong. Because it’s like, just like play testing, right? Like the first thing I ask people in play testing is what was your least favorite moment, right? Because that allows people, right? That gives them permission to tell you those things and to tell you things that would otherwise seem

you know, negative and might, they might be afraid of offending you or whatever. but I think it’s really important to help break that ice with people, especially like you said, whether it’s in a role of someone who they may look up to professionally or just someone who’s in a role where, you know, their future depends on you, ⁓ can be really scary to say to somebody who your career depends on, especially if you’re like first gig in your dream industry, right? If you’re in games or whatever, and that’s what you want to do.

might be really scary to be like, I think this is a terrible idea.

Rob (22:49)
Yeah, totally. it’s part of the learning experience as well. even if like there are there again, you can say it’s a terrible idea. And I love it when when they’re the ⁓ the culture is there to support that and like, yeah, it’s a terrible idea. And you can just you’re right, actually, what do you think that? And that’s cool. But even if that’s not the case, or you don’t feel that way, it’s like, well, how do I say it? That’s also a learning opportunity. Like, how am I able to say this thing without, you know,

sort of feeling, whether it’s offensive or not, that’s a perception, I guess, but without feeling that I’m offending somebody else. And there are ways to say that, like, know, maybe even think, and it guides into even deeper thought of what is going on, because then you start, it’s not just terrible, it’s like, ⁓ I think this is not gonna work because, and there it starts getting even more interesting, I would say.

James Portnow (23:41)
I I do always make my junior designers come with a why, right? They have to defend their position. They have to come with a reason behind these things because it’s a phenomena of the modern world, although also a human tendency to just jump to a conclusion, right? I don’t like this. I love this thing and then entrench there rather than really dig into the why behind it. And as designers, like,

Why is our bread and butter? Why is what we actually, that is our shop and trade, right?

Rob (24:18)
Yeah, yeah, totally, totally. James, is there, would you say that there is some sort of best practice in the industry? Something that you say, well, do this, right? And you know, more generally things, things can just go, go better, right? Whether it’s, you know, critiquing the people that are in the team or being open to that critique. You know, I loved what you were saying that you, you, you get, or your junior designers just started by critiquing.

somebody else’s with all those, with all those whys behind it and all that. love that.

James Portnow (24:53)
So, man, there’s a lot of different best practices we can go over. ⁓ I think in the games industry specifically, and this might be involved testing in general, ⁓ I find that even for some surprisingly large companies, test methodology is not good. One of the problems that we also face is

We live in a very metric space world today and metrics are phenomenal. Like don’t get me wrong. Why use them for a lot of things all the time, but metrics by definition are backwards looking. You can’t innovate ever with a metric. ⁓ metrics will tell you how something that exists is, is doing who it appeals to all this stuff. It will never tell you here’s the new thing you should do. and so to sort of put those things together, when you put together, we’re super reliant on metrics and.

we don’t have sort of a good and rigorous test methodology, or rather we have a very scientific and rigorous test methodology that doesn’t get us to the heart of things. You have an issue. Talking about why’s, right? I always have… ⁓

I always talk to people about the fact that, you know, that tendency to jump to conclusions very much happens in ⁓ our playtest sessions, right? Playtesters will always tell you, I think it should be like this. And then ⁓ they will leave it at that unless you really dig in and try and figure out what question they’re trying to answer. Because with that solution, there is a question they’re trying to answer.

They are not the expert. You are the expert, right? You built this thing, you are the game designer, that sort of thing. You are the expert. Their question is incredibly legitimate. You need to take seriously the question that they’re trying to answer because there is some problem that they had with your game. But their answer is a layman’s answer, right? Their answer is not the expert’s answer. It is your job to uncover that question and then provide

the best possible answer to that question. so digging down to really do that, I think has enormous value.

Rob (27:20)
that, I love that because it’s, it’s, I, when I’m teaching, one of the things I always tell people when they’re play testing is, ⁓ you, of course you want to listen very, you know, very attentively amongst other things because that’s important and it’s useful, but more than listening to what they say, which again is important and it’s carches, right? You’re inviting play testers in and oftentimes they’re even, you know, just friends or people you find on the street. the answers that they’re trying to provide and the ideas, maybe there’s a spark.

Right. And maybe there’s something super interesting, but more often than not, it’s their misguided feeling of, I’m trying to help you. Right. And I don’t know anything about this, but I’m trying to help you, you know, take it at face value in that sense. Like, you know, they’re having an idea. The most important thing is what was the actual behavior that you saw them do, especially when you have something that is already playable, just hand it over, step back and look at what they’re doing. And if you can do it even, you know, from the outside, so to speak, it’s even better.

Because you want to actually solve for what they’re doing in the game or where they get stuck. It’s not about what they say. like, I felt frustrated or, you know, this menu should be yellow and not green or whatever. It’s like, that doesn’t really matter. You know, as you were saying, not what they suggest. So oftentimes they don’t, they don’t have ⁓ your expertise. So keep that always, always in mind. love that.

James Portnow (28:40)
When they say to you the menu should be yellow and not green, that’s enormously valuable, right? Because when they say that, what they’re probably saying is, I didn’t understand the UI. I needed certain things highlighted, right? Very often. But like that’s where you should dig in because you’re right. You get those sort of answers all the time. There’s a lot of famous stories about ⁓ things where players suggested that graphics needed to be different.

But what they were really saying was some piece of information wasn’t as clear as I wanted it to be and I missed it. And this is my gut sense of how I would do that. They may not even realize that’s what they’re saying, but that’s why you have to sit down and really talk through and get down to that. Why? Because you’re right, right? Those are the type of answers that you’re very often going to get from your play testers. And it’s those answers are not what you’re trying.

not only not what you’re looking for, especially I see this danger when you talk about students, I see students all the time do a play test and go, my God, okay, we have to fix all these things and do all these things. And then they start putting in time and effort into fixing things that are player suggestions or changing things due to player suggestions rather than trying to figure out what the why is and what the fundamental issues are that they should actually be spending their time addressing.

Rob (30:06)
You know, when you see sort of game updates and what people say, even when they say, know, they fixed exactly what I was asking, so to speak, to fix. Usually I would say that, you know, especially when these things work out super well and there’s a lot of happy people. I don’t think there has been a time when that has been due to exactly what somebody asked them to do. They found a solution, as you were saying, to the underlying problem that was causing all of this.

They fixed that problem, which had nothing to do with what people were saying. And everybody was super pleased. That’s where you find that sort of deep answer and that problem that you were solving for. James, is there anybody that you would like to see as a future guest? whether you look up to or you’re curious to hear them answering these questions. I don’t know. Is there, is there somebody you would suggest to invite to the Professor Game podcast?

James Portnow (30:59)
I mean, there’s a bunch now that we’re on the tabletop side. I keep thinking about tabletop people. ⁓ but I think that, ⁓ on the tabletop side, I’d love to see Richard, Richard Garfield. ⁓ I think that on the, ⁓ video game side, actually, you know, who might be really interesting for you on the video game side? ⁓ Kenny Dinkinshay, the designer on Candy Crush for many, many years. ⁓ might be a great one. ⁓

But yeah, I mean, I just think that there’s a lot of interesting perspectives and then you could go the other route entirely, right? And you could get some more indie developers, like indie developers who have had success. like getting somebody who has done it from the other side as well could be really interesting. I’m trying to think of like, like the obvious one would be like,

like Jonathan Blow or somebody like that. But yeah, finding somebody who has taken something from ⁓ actually, the Slay the Spire guys. ⁓

They functionally invented a genre and they did it basically from scratch. Might also be a really interesting one, but this is a list that could go on forever. So I’ll cut myself off there. I mean, I think that you probably get fastening people all the time. So yeah, I just want to hear people answering more questions on design.

Rob (32:37)
Absolutely. love it. love it. And keeping up with recommendations, how about is there a book that you would say like, you know, read this book and they’ll help you whether directly related or just generally inspirational.

James Portnow (32:50)
Don’t know if I can give you one there. ⁓ I think that it’s important for designers to read Aristotle’s Poetics because it gives you an overview of what it means to deliver art. ⁓ Understanding comics is vital because you’ve started this critical analysis to understand how you utilize a form, right? Like the formal structure of the thing you’re building, whether it’s video games or comics or anything else. Design of everyday things is great because it helps you really get into the designer mindset and understand that

in the title game designer, designer is the key word, not game. ⁓ What else? ⁓ Simulacra and Simulation by Baudrillard is incredible. ⁓ It is also like walking into a brick wall. But I think it’s very important for modern designers because it makes you understand the responsibility of

building these worlds that people can escape into and sort of the layered reality that we create, right? Where people have their daily lives and their internet lives and their video game lives. And these are all important parts of who they actually are and they are all important, meaningful things to them. So that’s another one I recommend. But you asked for one, that’s four. I can keep going, but I’ll leave it at that.

Rob (34:19)
Love it, love it. Let me ask back.

James Portnow (34:22)
What do you usually get or like what would you recommend?

Rob (34:27)
I’ve had a lot of very interesting recommendations, some that keep coming back. ⁓ Jane McGonigal’s reality is broken is something that I’ve gotten a lot ⁓ that happens a lot. When talking about gamification ⁓ specifically, people tend to reference also things like Yukan Chao’s actionable gamification beyond points, batches and leaderboards. ⁓ I’ve had a few as well talking about because his analysis, especially of the player types of Hex out like Andrzej Marchewski. ⁓

book is called Even Ninja Monkeys Like to Play. It’s a very good book as well. It’s a lot of fun. ⁓ Jesse Shell’s ⁓ The Art of Game Design. Book of Langes. reference.

James Portnow (35:10)
was thinking about putting Book of Lenses on there, but the reason I didn’t put Book of Lenses on there is I find, especially when talking to people getting into this, that they want to rush right into ⁓ the game part. Book of Lenses is incredible for game stuff. Game Feel ⁓ is another great one. Flow by Cheeksock Mihai is another great one that you should read as… ⁓

I just always caution people about getting too…

too deep on the techniques of game before you really get into what does it mean for Mia to be a designer, right? But I think those recommendations are all great. I love Reality is Broken. I was a huge advocate of it like 10 years ago. I think that it was… Time has proven it out to be a little bit too Pollyanna. Like I like it a lot, but…

we are not going to solve a lot of the world’s problems with a lot of these things, right? Like think we can do better. It also goes a little bit too much into

sometimes the extrinsic awards as a way to get people into things and like I still like it a lot, right? But

I just worry that we are in a world where we also have to look at all the dangers that gamification can create and face them head on, right? And that’s a section that I wish was in that book, which I understand writing it at the time why it wasn’t, but yeah, no, those are all great recommendations.

Rob (37:02)
Amazing, amazing. So, James, we get to the difficult question now. What would you say is your favorite game?

James Portnow (37:09)
That’s not a possible quest, like one game. That’s like asking me my favorite band, right? Ask me tomorrow and I’ll have a different answer. ⁓ But, I talked, I said you should have Richard on the show. Magic the Gathering changed my life. So I have to give that credit. And I think it’s a good one to talk about specifically here because I was 12, 13.

playing magic with my friends and it was back at the very early first days of magic, right? Alpha magic and one of my friends was sitting there and he was taking a long time to take his turn and so I read the quote on the bottom of frozen shade and ⁓ it was a quote from Poe actually, but it was one of his poems and I’ve mostly been reading like hack fantasy up to that point and the language and it was just so much more powerful. You know what I did? I ran out to the library and got that book and then I ran out to library and got

Every book that they quoted in magic the gathering because this thing made me care about them if somebody had sat me down in English class or giving me homework to read these things Probably would have never read them right but because any introduced to me in a context right that I loved I I just devoured these things and then eventually I went to college for classics because I wanted to Read into them further and just have people to discuss these things with ⁓

And because somebody on the wizard side took, you know, an hour after their day when they really didn’t have to each day to not just ask themselves, what game can we make? also what can this game leave you with when you set down the cards, right? When you put away your deck, what can it leave you with when you walk away from it? ⁓ it did actually change my life. So I’m going to go with magic the ad.

Rob (39:01)
Magic the Gathering, huge, huge, huge stuff. I’ve had a love-hate relationship with Magic the Gathering after that, but I completely agree. I was stuck on it in high school too. ⁓ Love that one. Love that game for sure.

James Portnow (39:17)
It’s funny because like the most, I learned a lot about design from it. I learned a lot about computers from it, but like, ⁓ the most impactful part of it isn’t the game bit to me, right? They’ve stopped. They’ve stopped putting it. I understand for business reasons why, but they’ve stopped putting quotes on the cards. ⁓ but the fact that they did that initially is really the reason that it is probably the game that has influenced me the most.

Rob (39:45)
Absolutely, love that. So James, I don’t know if there’s anything else you want to leave the audience with. ⁓ Of course, where we can find out more about you, your crew, what you’re working on, whatever you want to guide us. And then we’ll say it’s at least for now game over.

James Portnow (40:00)
Perfect. Let me think. ⁓ guess… As far as me, so my company’s Night Crew Games, as you mentioned, we just put out Cyberpunk Legends, a co-op card game for the capital C, like, cyberpunk franchise. It is… We’re trying to push a lot of design, so… If that’s something that you’re interested in in the tabletop space…

come check it out. Kickstarter just finished, but probably by the time this goes live, we should have our pledge manager up if anybody wants to get a copy. But if not, if you just want to say hi or whatever, our, I’m in our Discord all the time. So just like look for the Cyberpunk Legends Discord. ⁓ I think there’s a link somewhere on our KnightCrew Games page. ⁓ But yeah, I’m happy to always talk to people who are into design. ⁓ And yeah, yeah, design boldly, everybody.

Rob (40:59)
Amazing. love that. So James, thanks again for taking the time. must be, if it was one when we started, it must be around 2 a.m. for you. So thanks a lot for taking the time to coming here, delivering all the huge value that you’ve given, you all your insights, all your experience that you’ve had on the podcast. However, at least for now and for today, it is time to say that it’s…

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