Recently, I had the opportunity to put a few questions to Varnavas Timotheou and Vangelis Bagiartakis, the Hegemonic Project Games design team behind the great new game World Order.
You’re best known for Hegemony: Lead Your Class to Victory, an amazing game concept but one I’ve not dared play because it’s rather too heavy for me; I was excited, however, to discover World Order, which looks more manageable for my group, and has a theme that really resonates with me. How did the game come about?
Varnavas: Hegemony grew out of my academic background in political science and international relations. The idea was to create a game that genuinely simulates the tensions between different socioeconomic classes. After the success of Hegemony, World Order felt like a natural evolution. Α chance to take that same philosophy of meaningful, education-through-play design and scale it to the global stage. Where Hegemony looks inward at domestic class struggle, World Order looks outward at how nations compete for global influence through diplomacy, economics and military power. World Order also draws from the research I did for my Master's thesis, which makes it something more personal: a passion project rooted in academic inquiry, and an attempt to offer players a meaningful lens through which to understand the geopolitical shifts that have been reshaping our world in recent years.
What were the trickiest things to get right in the game?
Varnavas: Balance, while staying true to the academic research underpinning the game. Each of the four factions (the USA, China, Russia and the EU) is rooted in real geopolitical theory and the distinct strategic doctrines these powers actually employ in international relations. Translating that academic truth into gameplay mechanics that are also fun, fair and balanced required an enormous amount of work. With four highly asymmetric factions, each with very different strengths, weaknesses and paths to influence, ensuring that no single faction dominates required countless hours of playtesting and iteration. Getting the balance right between historical and political authenticity on one hand, and engaging, replayable gameplay on the other, was perhaps our greatest design challenge.
Were there ideas for World Order that you rejected, and why? Is it likely that any of those could reappear as expansions for the game, or even entirely new games?
Vangelis: Obviously, there are lots of things that we tried, but ended up rejecting, for various reasons. Trade for example used to be very different in the beginning and it took a while before reaching a version that we truly liked. The Country cards were also different in our initial tests, with their levels going from 1–6 at some point (instead of 1–3 that they ended up with). That being said, I think the idea that we were the saddest to let go was having players pay different costs in order to move their armies. There was a whole system with different costs depending on which player you were and where you wanted to move your armies. However, while very thematic, it added more complexity to the game and made calculations more difficult, so when streamlining the rules, we had to let it go.
As far as future expansions are concerned, we are actively listening to community feedback and already have some directions in mind. We are also keen to explore ideas around other major world powers as playable factions, but we first want to see how people receive the main game, understand what they love about it and what they would like to see more of, and let that guide us.
I like the simple, quick auto-influence mechanism when there are fewer than 4 players (especially as I play a lot of games with just 2 players) and the more sophisticated automa (from the Diplomacy & Dominance expansion which provides solo play, as well as a more sophisticated opponent in 2–3 players. How important is solo play to you? Can you say something about the differences between the two mechanisms?
Vangelis: Right from the start, we knew that we had to allow for solo play. On top of that, it became apparent very quickly in our design process that even in lower player counts, all 4 super powers should somehow be present. To that end, we came up with two different solutions. The first one was the Auto-Influence mechanism. It was a very simple and elegant solution that, in a way, simulated the missing players. However, it didn’t fully behave like an actual player nor did it react to what was happening in the game. To give players a harder challenge, we created full Automas that could replace an actual player in all aspects. Thus, playing against Automas is much closer to playing against an actual human player, but requires a bit more work from the player.
In the end, the two systems serve different needs, the first one for speed and simplicity, the other one for depth and harder challenge. The good thing is that both of these have been praised by the players who have played the game, which means they are doing their job well!
I see there are a few fan-based variants of/expansions for Hegemony. and someone’s created a solo helper app for World Order already. What are your views on such things?
Varnavas: We love seeing the creativity of our community. Gameplay variants allow some people to enjoy the games even more, and fan-made tools show that players are deeply engaged with the game, which means the world to us. We try to stay aware of what's being created and we even promote some of them ourselves!
There are great digital adaptations of some board games (e.g., Dire Wolf’s Ark Nova), which have the major benefit of looking after housekeeping and providing ‘AI’ opponents. Do you have any plans for digital versions of your games?
Vangelis: Hegemony has recently gone live on BoardGameArena, which has been a fantastic way to provide another platform for our community. There are already tons of people playing it and many of them are discovering it for the first time! At the same time, both Hegemony and World Order are available on Tabletop Simulator and Tabletopia.
I can see you’re crowdfunding veterans. Have you any advice for people interested in publishing and producing their own games?
Varnavas: Start with a product you genuinely believe in. That passion comes through to backers, and they can tell when it isn't there. Be transparent about timelines and be prepared for things to take longer than expected, especially on the fulfilment side.
The Hegemony campaign was our first, with fewer moving parts and, honestly, a steep learning curve on our side too. By World Order we had learned a huge amount about managing expectations, logistics partners, and international fulfilment. The biggest lesson across both campaigns: communication with your community is everything, especially when things don't go according to plan. And at some point they will, because so much depends on third parties that are simply outside your control.
Looking at crowdfunding from the consumer side, I often see people complaining about prices (shipping in particular), or delays; another is asking how to change delivery addresses, which I can understand, because the time between ‘signing up’ and game delivery can be very long. Is there anything you can say about why these perceived difficulties arise, and how backers should think about the crowdfunding process?
Varnavas: Shipping costs in particular have become a real challenge. Global logistics prices have increased dramatically and we absorb as much of that as we can. The gap between pledging and delivery is an inherent part of the crowdfunding model as games need to be designed, manufactured and shipped, which takes time. We always try to set realistic expectations, though we know it can be frustrating when real-world events cause delays we couldn't have anticipated. And all of this has to be weighed against the final result. While everyone wants their game as quickly as possible, our philosophy has always been that quality comes first. Getting the balance right, making sure the rules are airtight, ensuring nothing has slipped through, these things matter deeply to us. We would rather take the extra time and deliver something we are genuinely proud of than rush something out that falls short of what both we and our players deserve.
Can we expect to see more new games in the not-too-distant future or are you having a well-deserved break after this campaign?
Vangelis: At the moment we are very excited to be developing Hegemony's upcoming expansion, Shadows of Authority, which we are planning to launch on Gamefound soon. Beyond that, we have some ideas in the works for the future that we plan to announce when we actually start working on them!
Where can we find out more about you and your work?
You can find us and stay up to date through the following links and of course, we would love to meet you in person at one of the events we attend, including the upcoming Spiel Essen and UKGE next year!
Thank you, Varnavas and Vangelis of Hegemonic Project Games.
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About the author
Current favourite boardgames are Ark Nova and Spooktacular, with a side of Dune: Imperium - Uprising and Paleo. When not playing games or blogging about them, L.N. Hunter keeps himself occupied writing fiction: a comic fantasy novel, The Feather and the Lamp, sits alongside over 100 short stories in various magazines and anthologies, and on websites and podcasts (see https://linktr.ee/L.N.Hunter for a full list). In any time left over after all that, L.N. occasionally masquerades as a software developer or can be found unwinding in a disorganised home in Carlisle, UK, along with two cats and a soulmate.
