In the Before Time, From the Long Long Ago…
It was the primitive days of 2008 when a woman stepped forward with an idea: an idea of a documentary both for and about the gaming community. For lo’, as it turns out that gaming culture has existed for decades (who knew?), there had been very few film attempts at exploring the world of designer board games, let alone the people that love them.
So she decided to make it herself.
Enter Lorien Green and the birth of Going Cardboard, a board gaming documentary.
| Round One |
| What was your gateway game?
My gateway game was Bonhanza actually, which is not considered one of the typical gateway games, but I do tend more toward card games. So for me that was definitely a gateway game; also Power Grid is one that we played early on that I really liked . . . We played Catan at the beginning too, but it wasn’t for very long. What was the last game you really enjoyed playing? Dominion for the most part. There was one I played at Pax East – we ran into Scott Nicholson and some other people, and this guy had this new game and it’s got a weird long name. It’s like Something Duels of the Spell Wizards. I bought it because it was really good. How big is your game collection? Oh…we have really, really, seriously cut down. I think we had about 300-400 during the time that we were filming, but since then we got into the pinballs we got rid of some of them, we downsized some of them. I’d say we have a couple hundred at this point. What’s your favorite type of game to play? Definitely card games: Dominion, Thunderstone. We went to Thunderstone because I started out in Magic: The Gathering . . . I like board games; I definitely have played Monopoly and played all that and I like them and I really have nothing against Monopoly, but for me it’s really more the card games. That actually goes into our other question, which is: how do you feel about Monopoly? I have nothing against Monopoly. I gathered that people – a lot of people – really have a chip on their shoulder about it. I felt like I was pretty kind to Monopoly in the documentary… I have nothing against it, but what Scott Nicholson (of Board Games with Scott) says – it’s like a starting point of discussion – that’s really a good assessment of it. It’s really a base you can start talking about board games from, but it’s like night and day different. It’s not the same [as designer board games] at all. |
Why did you want to make the documentary?
Basically because there wasn’t one, and I thought it was a really cool topic and it was photogenic. I was a gamer at that point, but I was really casual and I still am sort of casual . . . I just recognized there’s so many [films] about these other geek topics, and it was just one that needed it, you know? So it was basically filling a niche. That was the big reason.
Everybody wants to talk, so it was really easy to get interviews. I thought it would be hard to get Reiner Knizia (Lord of the Rings, Lost Cities) and Klaus Teuber (Settlers of Catan); I was freaking out contacting them. But they want to talk about it. So, it was no problem at that point. I mean, I didn’t even know about ESSEN when I started. You kind of just follow the rabbit hole.
How was ESSEN? Was that intimidating to go into?
It was actually so much fun, because I like doing things independently and I was there by myself . . . it felt like an adventure, you know? There was my backpack and my film stuff and there are throngs of people. I’m just wandering around and I’m like, “Gotta get footage”. I was hunting the whole time, and I like the hunt.
So it was fun, but I didn’t get to do any gaming. I went there – the world’s hugest gaming convention – and didn’t game. That’s a regret, but at the time I was just so focused.
But it was awesome. . . .Like they say in the movie, everyone should go there once – absolutely. It was amazing, and Germany is so cool.
What message were you trying to convey with the documentary?
It was what you call an advocacy piece, so it was very pro designer board games; I wanted people to know about the games because I felt it was a cult thing that I stumbled on. Everybody that I go up to that finds out about it, they’re like, “Wow… it’s really awesome”. They say that in the film too like, “Oh I never knew these games existed!” I wanted to get that information out, and I’m an online marketer by trade, so I wanted to market it.
The other thing was I wanted to show the people, because a lot of documentaries that I don’t like make the people look stupid and geeky. I didn’t want to do that because everyone I knew were cool, normal people.
You mentioned in the film how inclusive the gaming community was. Did you find that this helped you while making Going Cardboard?
Yeah, and that was the thing: at the Gathering of Friends, I had access to a ton of designers and publishers, which was a really big deal for me. It’s invitation only; everybody playing there knows, “Ok this is a friend of someone who is a hardcore gamer” or, “This is somebody who has been vetted”. It really amplifies that you can walk up to anybody because there’s a trust factor already . . . that helped a lot for me.
The same thing goes for any board game convention. Right off the bat you know you’ve got something fundamental in common with the other person. I think it’s huge, and that’s really important today in society in general for meeting people. It gives you a good commonality.
My husband and I met playing Magic, so it works . . . I was a casual player. I just liked collecting the cards more than anything. I loved the art, and he was a major hardcore tournament player. I was running with that group back in college, and that’s when I wish I had like really cracked out and done a documentary. Oh my god I wish someone had, and I really regret that they didn’t, because it was like soap opera city. I mean, it was crazy. You would see Richard Garfield walk across the lobby with his patchwork blazer on, being King of the World.
Who are you hoping to reach with this film? Are you hoping to show the game community to themselves, or are you hoping to reach new people who aren’t necessarily gamers?
It was really two-purpose, and my editor told me, “Do not try to make a movie with two audiences in mind”. My mentor, my other favorite documentary director told me the same thing. . . I was just like, “I can’t help it!”
Friedemann with his trademark green.
Photo courtesy of 2-Spiele
I want the people who are hardcore gamers to see that stuff – to see Friedemann Friese (Power Grid), to hear him talk, and to see those people who designed the games that have given them hours and hours of pleasure. I felt that was cool, and people want that. Especially because back then, [when the documentary was filmed], those guys were not on camera very much. There were print interviews, but nobody was seeing them too much, especially Donald Vaccarino (Dominion), who was like a hermit at the time. . . .People questioned whether he existed, maybe he was a front. I mean seriously, that’s what everyone kept saying at ESSEN, and I was going to ask him that. Eric Martin, who was with me from Board Game News– he was like, “Don’t ask him that. He’s been asked that like a dozen times.”
I wanted the hardcore gamers to know some of that stuff, know how Power Grid came to be, things like that. But I also wanted to be a marketing vehicle. They can hand this to one of their non-gamer friends, and they can watch it and be drawn in. And want to then play. I wanted to appeal to newbies and to hardcore players. There were some trade-offs when we do that, but I think we pulled it off ok.
It was definitely interesting for us to see the designers of these games that we’ve played. The Dungeon Twister guy…
Oh he was awesome! That was totally random. I was just walking around ESSEN and I saw his booth, and it was one of the only ones with video. Nobody was doing video at ESSEN. He had a Dungeon Twister video I was watching, and I was like, “Oh my god, this is hilarious”. He was just out there with his energy, but it wasn’t until the next day or so that I was like, “What do you do? I should interview you.” It was just out of nowhere, and he was one of the most fun interviews.
It was announced recently that Geek & Sundry will be partnering to help sell the board games that they feature in Target stores. What do you think of board games making it onto mainstream store shelves?
Well, I think it’s something that the geek community itself has really wanted. They feel legitimized . . . whereas some designers, like Mark Kaufmann from Days of Wonder, are not even interested in that at all. They say, “If we went to Walmart, they would negotiate the price down to a ridiculous margin, and the quality of the components would have to do down”, and it would wind up not being the experience they wanted people to have.
Now that it’s happening, I saw a lot of controversy regarding it. There was discussion saying that it’s not really going to help because the people psyched about these games already know about them . . . but the people who don’t know are still going to be intimidated and not approach it. Which may or may not be true, you know?
I don’t know how much it helps, because you still kind of need a rules person – you need a guide with these games because they tend to be more complicated. Now, they’re bringing in a lot of the simpler ones, so that’s good. Maybe if they just get the gateway games into places like that, how can it not be good for the hobby? It must be good.
“I had this game in its original Latin!”
But then there’s a certain degree of it that comes with anything. It’s like the Sneeches: when it becomes mainstream people do the hipster thing. They’re like, “I was into that when it was really cool and obscure” – there’s going to be that backlash.
It can’t be bad, especially for the designers. I hope they completely succeed. . . .If that’s what it takes, for someone like Wil Wheaton to talk about it for people to notice, well then good that he’s talking about it! I think the hobby itself would be fine without that, but people do want it to grow.
What do you think about board games going digital now? I know Days of Wonder is doing a lot of that.
I like it. For me it’s been a solo experience every single time. . . . I’ve played Carcassonne with friends [online], but it’s not necessarily fun. They did a brilliant job of implementation, Carcassonne. Especially where they hit asynchronous play, they handled that very well. But it still isn’t the same. If I want to play Carcassonne I want to sit down with people.
As far as getting the word out, it’s awesome. It’s phenomenal, it’s super important. It’s a great way for people to get the rules, and that’s a big thing with me. It’s a computer handling it, so it gets you warmed up and walking through it. You’re not making mistakes because it basically won’t let you. I think that’s one of the greatest services that [digital board games] provide. I mean I really did enjoy Dominion on the iPhone for awhile – I was playing it all the time. And I was playing Ticket to Ride on the X-Box; that was cool.
Ticket to Ride seems like a good one for that.
Yeah, it really was. And the Ticket to Ride iphone implementation is different [from the board game]. They’re smart to not make it the exact same game and try to cram it into an iPhone – it’s sort of a simpler, more streamlined thing. It’s a lot of fun, but I don’t really do them much because when you think board games, you want that other experience. It’s a good way to get your fix, but it has its pros and cons.
How do you feel the documentary has been received by the gaming community?
I think it’s been really well-received. I still think there are tons of people out there who just don’t know about it. That’s the thing too: I wasn’t even thinking that prior to launch. I was so focused on ‘we have to get this done’. That part of ‘oh no, are people going to like it?’ didn’t click. And then there was this moment I’m like “Oh my god, what if people don’t like it?”, because it’s amateur. It’s not shiny and highly polished like Indie Game: The Movie that’s much, much higher quality, and Two Player Productions was starting to rock right then with their Mojang documentary [Minecraft: The Story of Mojang] that they are working on. So the success of this one really had to rely on just heart; it had to rely on the story and the heart, and just conveying the information. I think it’s really the strength of the subject matter and the community that made it successful. It wasn’t me. It was just that I was able to get the right things and put them together, and I had access to the right stories. But it’s been really well-received, and I’m very happy with it.
And it’s actually going to be available digitally in January!
What was the most difficult part of making the film?
One of the things that comes to mind was cutting it down, because I just had so much stuff that I really liked. . . if I didn’t have someone else editing it, it would have been twice as long. It is really hard to go through that just by yourself. You won’t let go of stuff that you should let go of, you just won’t. You’ll form personal attachments, and there was a lot of stuff that I had to cut.
One of the hardest things is when you interview somebody and you don’t wind up using any of that interview in the film. Then you’re feeling, not necessarily like you wasted the time, but like they’re going to feel bummed about that. Because they get all excited. I’m a people pleaser; I want to make everybody happy. I really was so thankful that people took the time to be interviewed, especially where I’m nobody coming there like, “Oh I’m going to make a movie!”
There were a couple – two or three – that I was not able to use at all. . . There was a really nice couple I interviewed on the floor at the Gathering of Friends, this Canadian couple. They were super cool, but the audio was bad so I just couldn’t use it. I had to make the decision to axe it.
And that guy at the very, very end [of the movie], Zendo designer Kory Heath, said all he wanted to do, the only reason he cares about money, is that he just wants to play or design board games every day. I love that part, and in that case I was happy I was able to do that, at least sneak that part in because I was so in love with that quote. Because he meant it too. He meant every word of it.
On the flip side, what was the most rewarding moment of the whole process?
One of the most rewarding moments was definitely when the lights came up at M.I.T. for the premier screening, the first time I’d been there in front of a big audience. I mean 50 people, not huge, but for me that was crazy. They applauded, and I was like, “Oh my god, they liked it.”
But even bigger than that was definitely the PAX East screening. Because that was big . . . and people were laughing at the right parts and they were involved and just walking up [to me] because the year before that I’d been filming there. It was a cool full-circle thing, and then to have a whole panel room of my own, that was definitely massively rewarding. I loved that.
We read a couple other interviews that you’ve done, and you mentioned in at least one of them that the New England area is really great for gaming and everything. Do you think it’s the same way in other parts of the U.S.?
I’ve actually heard that it’s not the same. I was on a radio show with some guys in Texas, and it’s really hard for them to find gaming groups and stores. . . I mean, it’s spreading, it’s changing. We are lucky to have places like Myriad [Myriad Games] and a lot of other board gaming stores around here, but it goes in tiers. There are places where there aren’t a lot of game stores; you have to order the stuff online. . .Then there are places where we’ve got specialty stores like Myriad, and then there are places I’m jealous of that have gaming cafes serving lattés and stuff. I’m so jealous.
There were some games that you really focused on in the movie, but there are so many games out there. How did you narrow it down?
Right. Well, like I said with Christophe [Boelinger], that was random. So Dungeon Twister was just out of the blue, but there were certain ones that I was like, “I definitely want to hit these”. Like Power Grid and Friedemann because that was just huge. He’s awesome for this kind of documentary because he has trademarks – the green hair thing, the green box thing – and also he’s very cool to talk to. He’s very personable, and the accent’s cool.
Then Dominion like I said, because that was such a mystery at the time, and it was a Spiel game. (Although it wasn’t at the time – that was stupid luck that I happened to get those interviews beforehand.) That was really good. But I wanted to interview the Dominion guys because I had heard ahead of time that it was good, and I also had played the prototype of Dominion way back. It had just been really fun. It’s very Magic-y so I was into it.
Settlers of Catan: the Monopoly of designer board games
And obviously Klaus Teuber, because if you’re making a documentary about this stuff, you really want to get the fundamentals. Everybody’s saying [Settlers of Catan is] the gateway game. Whether it is or not, it’s very accessible and it’s very popular, and that’s your biggest shot of people knowing anything about this on the street. If you walk up to someone randomly and say, “Do you know about Settlers of Catan?” they might say yes. But if you say, “Do you know about German-style games or designer games?” they’re probably going to say no.
Basically I picked the games that were very well known, very popular, or very interesting for other reasons. And I left it open so there was enough time to get some of the other stuff in there, things that I had came across that had seemed cool like Chris Konieczka’s Battlestar Galactica. I was a huge Battlestar fan. So, a lot of it is personal bias. But he contacted me because he was actually going to be in this area – that was also random. He was like, “Yeah I can swing by for an interview,” and I’m like, “Yes please!”
Cool.
Yeah, he was awesome, and he was so humble. When he told the story about how Battlestar launched at GenCon…he was so cool because you could see the authenticity in him.
That’s what I really like and what really makes me passionate: seeing other people in their element. Just seeing their eyes when they’re having an awesome time, and they’re doing the thing that they most love in the world. And you could just tell with him that was where he was at.
Be sure to check out Going Cardboard if you haven’t yet. Not only does it come with a great film and tons of bonus footage, but it also contains Shoot-Out, a 2-player game designed by the aforementioned Reiner Knizia.
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