Recently I had the opportunity to put a few questions to Maxime Tardif, designer of multi-award-winning and very popular boardgame Earth and its expansions. His new game, Earth Express is currently doing very well on Kickstarter (along with Behind the Lens), with the campaign racing past the funding target within minutes. For those not familiar with Earth Express, I’ve written about it already, noting how much I like it.
Earth wasn’t your first game release; BoardGameGeek tells me that BrilliAnts and DiverCity came before that, also both nature-inspired games, is that right? I’ve got a couple of related questions: how did you get from initial idea to a complete game; and how do you think your approach and style has changed since those early games?
Indeed, the first game I designed is called BrilliAnts and the second one I did was called DiverCity. As you can see, I really like nature so from the beginning when I started designing games I always focused on nature themes!
When I design a game, I always start with the theme. After having a theme in mind, I reflect on mechanisms that make me think of that theme and that would integrate well. I know that many designers do the exact opposite, start with mechanics then take a theme that would fit those mechanics; to each its own. If I have any advice to give to aspiring designers is, no matter how you proceed, just do it, put your ideas on paper and work hard!
I haven’t changed this approach of working since I first started. A funny anecdote about Earth is that I didn’t choose the theme in fact! One morning at the start of the pandemic my girlfriend, Isabelle, asked me to create a game about plants. So I told her, ok, I can do that, let me have 2 months and I’ll create a game with 100 cards. After 2 months, I told her, let me have another month and I’ll create a game with 200 cards. Then I said give me another month, it’ll be 400 cards instead! Haha, that’s how the game took shape in this specific case. Thanks to the pandemic, I had all this spare time available to me and the best way I found to pass it was to work on Earth.
What were the trickiest things to get right with Earth, and how long did it take to be fully satisfied with what you’d produced? How large a team was involved?
The trickiest thing to get right for Earth was definitely the balance. As a gamer, I tend to really like games that are well balanced. When there are cards that feel always to powerful or weak, I lose interest in games. A meta is then mandatory to play the game and I prefer games where you need to think differently each time you play. [Note: in this context, ‘meta’ (or ‘metagame’) means playing a higher-level game layered on top of the main one, in which all players are aware of biases and imbalances and plan accordingly.]
So to have a good balance of cards in Earth was no easy task. There are 429 unique cards (including each side of the double-sided ones). All of them can be interconnected into a 4×4 grid of cards in front of you, in many different configurations. So, to be able to test all the possibilities, even an army of 1,000 play testers couldn’t possibly see and analyse every possible configuration and outcome.
In order to do that, I had to think and work really hard at creating a probabilistic algorithm that tests the balance of each single card in all situations. I developed this algorithm using an Excel sheet and that took me about 4 months of full-time work to achieve. This was all done before I even play tested the game once!
Then, play testing the game, many things changed and the formula was updated at each iteration of the game to match with realities I saw when playing. This was the hardest part of this whole project. I was working alone on that in my small basement apartment. The main play tester has always been Isabelle, even more so during the pandemic since we were not allowed to see other people at all.
It took me about 40 iterations total before I first presented the game to publishers. It was a lot of printing and cutting papers, haha! If you are interested in knowing more details about this and all the process, I invite you to read the designer’s diary that I posted on BGG over here: Earth Designer’s Diary.
I’ve tried Earth a few times, but have never really got my head around it—I find I’m given too much choice to deal with on a turn. I like the way Earth Express adds some constraints and reduces the overall size of the game, and am guessing that speed and complexity were major considerations when creating this game; what else drove the design of Earth Express? [Note: for readers unfamiliar with Earth Express, check out my preview article mentioned earlier.]
It’s nice that you bring that point up about Earth, that there are many choices to deal with on a turn. While working on the game at first, my goal was to replicate the feeling I had when I was young and playing a deck of Storm in Magic the Gathering, which is exactly that. A plethora of options and a vast array of possibilities! I knew this wouldn’t be for everyone, but at the same time I knew no game on the market that was capable of delivering such an experience for many players at the same time in a short time frame. I was really aiming for people exactly like me, knowing that this would be too much and overwhelming for many people at the same time.
Indeed, one of the goals of Earth Express was to add a bit more constraint to the game, but not entirely. My main goal, though, was to create the 20-minute game with the most strategy and replay value of Earth. The main concern here wasn’t to reduce choices and options, but to give a somewhat similar level of options in a 20-minute package. I really like compact and fast games with a lot of strategy and replay value, but I don’t know many of them on the market. We just had a baby and don’t have as much time to play games as we used to do, but we still want to play fast and have a full experience. That’s what Earth Express is all about, having a mid-weight euro game that plays in the time of a filler. So, again, I’m aiming at people like me that like to have a super condensed strategic experience.
Still, in reducing the time, I did have to cut some elements that made Earth a more complex experience: Soil, the cost of the cards, Islands, Climates and Events are not in Earth Express. The tableau is a 3×3 instead of a 4×4, so overall it’s still a less overwhelming experience, but in no way would I describe Earth Express as a gateway game. It’s really a gamer’s filler!
[Note: Earth Express Climate cards are available as a Kickstarter addon. Here’s hoping they also make it to retail!]
While researching for this, I came across a BGG thread talking about overpowered cards in Earth; do you think there is too much imbalance in card strengths, or is it a case of the cards coming out at the ‘wrong’ time? I’ve seen a similar discussion about Wingspan, where it was noted that, yes, there are some cards that work best if they’re drawn early and useless towards the end, while conversely, some birds are good end-game cards, but too swingy if they pop out at the start—but removing these cards or reducing all powers to ‘small’ ones would make the game less interesting overall. Does that hold here? Was there anything you addressed for Earth Express to ‘balance’ the game compared with Earth?
Yes indeed, all games will have imbalances, even more so when there are a lot of cards involved. I tried to create the game that balances every card the best I could, but one thing I noted after having many statistics gathered over the more than 300,000 games played on BGA, is that my algorithm developed to evaluate the card strength of cards when you play them in your tableau demonstrated the Fauna and Flora cards were indeed well-balanced. However, I applied the same formula for Islands and Ecosystem cards, which are played right from the start, and it doesn’t work as well for those cards. So I know that islands that give you more at the start also give you a better advantage when you play. Still, people have won games on many occasions with each of them so they are all viable and will work in different strategies.
Regarding the timing of when you play a card, that is a really interesting point. It’s a problem that 100% of engine builders will have and there is nothing to do about it sadly. In all engine building games, cards that cost low and have a strong engine will always be really strong at game start and weak at game end. Even if you make them expensive to play which is contradictory because they are mostly good at start, they will still be better at game start and bad at game end. The cards that score you straight victory point and that don’t have a good engine will always be stronger the more the game goes on, there’s no solution against that.
Knowing that when working on Earth, the algorithm I created evaluates and compares all cards as if they are played at exactly the middle of the game. If they are all balanced from the middle of the game, that means that some of them will be stronger at the beginning and others at the end, but over let’s say 1,000 games, they should all be played about the same amount of time because there’s always a situation where they will be good or bad.
What I wanted to avoid is to have some cards that are always good or bad, no matter the situation. While the formula isn’t perfect and there will always be people that discover mistakes or malfunctions, I think overall it worked pretty well for balancing most of the cards!
In Earth Express it was easier to do, because there are no Islands, Climates and Event cards, which were amongst the hardest to balance. Also, there is no Soil cost, so one less variable to take into consideration. I tweaked some things here and there in the algorithm regarding what people said about Earth. I kept the fact that cards are compared as if played at the middle of the game, so some will be really good at start and other at game end. Overall, I think this resulted in a game that has an even better balance, thanks to all the comments I received :-) I’m pretty sure that gamers will find things to improve yet again, which is all good because that’s the way we move forward!
I wonder if you can say something about the game components. I’m afraid I don’t find the sprout tracks appealing, but I imagine that packing 8 full player boards into the box would have increased costs quite a lot. (I see that rather attractive neoprene mats are available as campaign add-ons.)
This is a really interesting point you raise here! The reason to put those tracks at first was to be able to reduce the number of sprout cubes we put in the game to reduce the costs. At 8 players this would’ve been an overwhelming amount of cubes. Also, the tracks reduce manipulation since you don’t have to reach for cubes at the middle of the table all the time. They improve the game on those front, but we are aware they are not perfect. We are currently seeking other options and avenues to address this issue and we’ll do everything we can to deliver the best product possible straight out of the box! With the costs and everything, I don’t know what will be feasible though.
Were there other ideas for the new games that you rejected/postponed, and why? Perhaps what I’m really asking is: will further Earth-likes be coming along?
I didn’t reject or postpone any idea or project, except the fact that the last year I didn’t work as much as usual on board games because of the birth of my little girl, Anna :-) I wanted to spend a lot of time with her so I guess we could say some of my projects were “delayed”, but all for the best I would say. As I mentioned previously, I really like nature-themed board games, so I’m really looking forward into developing more games related to Earth in the future! I hope they will get published, but I don’t have a crystal ball so I don’t know if that’ll be the case or not.
Riffing off that, can you drop any hints about what you’re currently working on and what sorts of games we might see next?
Yes of course! 2 years ago I worked on Rayman the Board Game and the mass production officially started today! It’s a fast-paced family racing game with many elements we can add on to satisfy gamers and adolescents alike. I can’t wait to see it come to life, the expected release date in retail should be some time next autumn. I’m also working on a word game with a friend of mine here in Quebec City. It’s a party game that will be release directly to retails; a cooperative 15-minute game where you use ideas to associate 2 different words together. If you know any distributors and publishers that would be interested in an idea like that let me know ;-)
I’m also working on another project planned to launch next year with a company I really like, but I can’t tell you much about it since it’s still in development. Besides that I have various prototypes here at home that I’m working on when I have spare time :-)
I see that Earth has a presence on BoardGameArena. Will we see the new game there? What are your opinions on digital boardgames?
I’m really happy that Earth is on BGA and I think that Earth Express will be coming there as well. Personally, I don’t play board games on computer. The only one I ever played was a game of Earth with the guy that programmed it who is from Quebec province as well. He’s a really nice guy called Guillaume Benny and asked me to, so I was really happy to play with him! He’s pretty good at the game and beat me to it by quite a margin, which I thought was really cool.
I think that digital board games are amazing. I mean, I love board games and want everyone to enjoy them as much as I do. So, every way to play them is great. I just don’t play them online because I have the chance to be able to play every day with my girlfriend and friends already. And, if I can choose, I’ll always play on a table instead of a screen. But that’s me and I’m happy that people can enjoy them in every way possible.
One thing to keep in mind is that, board games are mostly designed to play on a physical table. Platforms like BGA are great but can be a double-edged sword. The experience might differ from what you get on an actual table, so some might prefer the game in one form or the other. Keep that in mind when playing a game on a computer, the real-life experience might be different than the one you get there!
Moving back from Earth Express a little, I see you’ve used crowdfunding for many, if not all, of your releases, initially by yourself but partnering with Inside Up Games more recently. Is this the future of boardgaming—in fact, has it already been the way forward for some time? Kickstarter, Gamefound and BackerKit are where I tend to look for innovative games (though I might wait for them to hit retail before purchasing), but what can you say about that route for publishing games?
This is quite an interesting question. I don’t think there’s a definite answer to this one. I don’t think it’s necessarily the future of board games since still the majority of games that come nowadays still go to retail channels directly instead of Kickstarter. I think Kickstarter is a good tool for people like me that didn’t have connections or were not known in the industry to be able to put their game out there and reach an audience that wasn’t attainable to them without these tools. I think that crowdfunding sites are good and best for big games and that retail is good for all games and better for small games, haha. Does that make sense?
I think that overall, they all bring more people into gaming and they are good for the industry in general. Many famous people and games in the industry were brought to us by Kickstarter and Gamefound and found their way into retail after and did very well. Those products might have never existed without crowdfunding. That was the case with Earth, but there are tons of other examples, like the fact that Jamey Stegmaier started on KS which led him to many successes; games like Zombicide, Mindbug, Cascadia and many others came out on Kickstarter and did very well after in retail.
If you are interested in getting your game published though, keep in mind that there is no easy road! It’s a hard field with fierce competition, and I’m the best example for that. The first campaign I ran for BrilliAnts failed, we needed to relaunch the game in order to succeed. The second game I tried to launch, DiverCity, failed on KS. We needed to downscale the product to Mini DiverCity in order for it to succeed. I then had many failures on Kickstarter with Galaxies and pitching games to publishers in Essen and Gen Con. Each time I had a failure, I took the opportunity to learn from it and move forward. It took me 10 years and more than 30 prototypes in the field before finally having a success in Earth!
Now that the campaign for Earth Express is live, is your job over, and you get to watch other people do the work of promoting the game idea and then manufacturing and selling, or is there still plenty for you to do?
Haha, that’s an awesome question and quite easy to answer. My job is never over! Working on a board game is like doing a painting or writing a book I guess. There’s always something that can be better/improved. Thus the reason to work on Earth Express, try to improve upon a previous concept. I did the same thing with Abundance. Look at the comments and what didn’t work as I wanted to in Earth and develop an expansion that address some of these issues.
There’s always something you can do about the game, promotion, a convention or anything that can help the word out there. I’m currently answering your questions, which I consider job and a part of this continuing process. I love doing that though, that’s my job and I’m so grateful to be able to do that and live from that! I will never complain about working in that field, haha.
Just as an example, this weekend I gave a talk at a university here in Chicoutimi for aspiring game designers, then I was on a jury to test prototypes, advise and deliver a price, then I was at a booth presenting my game, talking to gamers and people in the industry to create contacts. This is all part of the process of developing and creating a game. It never ends, you need to set your own limits, learn to know when to push and when to stop.
Do you have any advice for people wanting to get started on game design or crowdfunding their projects?
Yes, do it!! There’s no better way to put your idea forward than to push for it, sit, do the maths, cut paper and stress test it to its core. Also, a mistake I often see designers do is to stick with an initial idea; although it might be ok or average at best, they stick with it as if it was their baby. I understand the feeling, I’ve been there. But, if it doesn’t work, be transparent about it. Look at it, find why it doesn’t work, move on and either improve upon your concept or try something different. No matter what you do, try to always move forward, don’t do stalemate, you’ll progress and good things will eventually happen!
There’s that, but I just thought of probably the most important point of them all: play a lot of games. The more you play, the more you’ll have ideas and you’ll learn what works and what doesn’t. Play, play and play games! It’s all good work I’m telling you :-)
What boardgames do you play, and what do you particularly like about them? Have you any stand out favourites at the moment?
My favorite board game is Mindbug with all its expansions. I’ve always been a fan of Magic the Gathering since I was 10 years old, and Mindbug took everything I liked about Magic and condensed it in a better and more approachable package. Not only that, they took out everything I didn’t like about Magic, haha. Other games I really enjoy at the moment are Planet Unknown, Fromage/Formaggio and Let’s Go! To Japan, which are all games with simultaneous play. I hate to wait and do nothing when I play. I also really enjoy engine builders like Res Arcana, Etherstone, Gizmos and Wingspan.
What else can you tell us about Maxime Tardif, the person outside the game industry? What do you do in your spare time, if such a thing exists?
Even though I work quite hard, I still have plenty of spare time! I really enjoy doing a lot of sports. In winter I play hockey about 3 times a week in 3 different teams. In summer I try to play tennis almost daily as it’s a fast and compact activity I can squeeze even when I have tight schedule. I’ve been playing both since I was 4 years old and never stop. I plan on never stopping, as long as I can I’ll keep doing sports! The rest of my spare time is mostly spent doing saunas and playing board games of course. I try to play every day.
Where can we find out more about you and your work?
If you are interested in knowing more about me or my work you can follow me on Facebook or I suggest you read the designer’s diaries I wrote about Earth, Earth: Abundance, Earth: Animal Kingdom and Earth Express. They are all accessible on BGG and I talk a lot about me, the designing process and what led me to this. I always like hearing from you guys, and if you have any question, feel free to poke me on BGG or Facebook and I always do my best to answer questions and comments!
Remember, never stop playing games, that’s why where all here in the first place :-)
Finally, is there anything you wish people would ask you about your games?
There are no specific questions that comes to my mind regarding what they should or shouldn’t ask. I think most questions are good and make us think, progress and move in the right direction! If I had one, it might be why is Earth so open as a game? The short answer would be, because I really like to feel powerful, have a lot of options and don’t feel restrain when I play games, haha! There’re enough restrictions and procedural things I need to do in real life, I don’t want to bring all those restriction and limitations with me when I play a board game.
And that’s very good point to end this Q&A! I’m grateful to Maxime for taking the time to answer my questions.
About the author:
When not playing boardgames or blogging about them, L.N. Hunter keeps himself occupied writing fiction: a comic fantasy novel, The Feather and the Lamp, sits alongside close to 100 short stories in various magazines and anthologies, and on websites and podcasts (see https://linktr.ee/L.N.Hunter for a full list). 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.
