Rob Alvarez Bucholska
0

Michael Yang Builds a Sustainable Game Design Career | Episode 368

 

If you’re struggling to keep people engaged and loyal in your product or business, Join Our (FREE) Professor Game Community Now & Learn how to create true loyalty: professorgame.com/freecommunity-web

Can embracing failures and iterative improvement lead to lasting success and innovation in game creation? This conversation sheds light on how strategic experience design can achieve educational and business objectives while maintaining an element of fun and excitement. Michael also recounts his early struggles with teamwork and humility, as well as the tension between creative fulfillment and financial stability. From his tranquil morning rituals to his meticulous planning and innovative evening sessions, Michael shares invaluable insights into maintaining productivity and creativity.

Michael Yang is a game designer with over a decade of industry experience, both in video games and board games. He’s played an instrumental role in the release of over 20 games; everything from educational video games to mobile freemium games, to most recently making a lateral shift into Card Games as the designer and developer of Greater Than Game’s hot new release, Compile. Michael dreams of making engaging content accessible to everyone and believes in the power of games to revolutionize lives and learning.

Rob is a host and consultant at Professor Game as well as an expert, international speaker and advocate for the use of gamification and games-based solutions, especially in education and learning. He’s also a professor and workshop facilitator for the topics of the podcast and LEGO SERIOUS PLAY (LSP) for top higher education institutions that include EFMD, IE Business School and EBS among others in Europe, America and Asia.

 

Guest Links and Info

 

Links to episode mentions:

 

Lets’s do stuff together!

Looking forward to reading or hearing from you,

Rob

 

Full episode transcription (AI Generated)

Rob:
Hey, this is Professor Game where we interview successful practitioners of games, gamification and game thinking to help us multiply engagement and loyalty. I’m Rob Alvarez, a consultant and the founder of Professor Game and a professor of gamification and games based solutions at IE Business School, efmd, EBS University and other places around the world. And before we dive into the interview, if you’re struggling with engagement in your business and are looking to find out how to make sure your users stay with you, perhaps you will find our free gamification course useful. Find it for free in the links in the description. Hey engagers, and welcome to another episode of the Professor Gaming podcast. And we have Michael with us today. But Michael, we need to know, are you prepared to engage?

Michael Yang:
I am. I’m very ready.

Rob:
Let’s do this. Let’s go. Because Michael Yang is a game designer with over a decade of industry experience in both video games and board games. He’s played an instrumental role in the release of over 20 games, everything from educational video games to mobile freemium games to most recently making a lateral shift into card games as the designer and developer of Greater Than Games. Hot new release compile. And Michael had dreams of making engaging content accessible to everyone and believes in the power of games to revolutionize lives and learning so that it couldn’t be more aligned with what we do here at Professor Game. Michael. So I’m just asking myself, why weren’t you interviewed before? But anyways, happy to have you here. Michael, is there any anything we’re missing from that intro that we should know?

Michael Yang:
No, I’m glad you’re also bringing passion to that statement. Yeah, I hope I can give you some back.

Rob:
I’m sure, I’m definitely sure. We’re in this world and there’s not few of us at this point anymore, but there’s not a huge amount of people who are doing this. So we are close knit community in many ways. Even if you don’t know each other, at least in my experience, we pour our hearts into this work. But let’s get started. So Michael, you’re doing many things and you’ve had lateral movements and you’ve been through different stages as a designer and in general making games. What does a regular day with you look like? If we were to follow you for a day or a week or whatever that looks like, what would that feel like? What would we be doing?

Michael Yang:
Yeah, interesting. Day to day, there’s not a lot of change. Day to day, week to week, it feels like a lot of change happens. But Each day kind of structured very similarly. I wake up in the morning, my wife and I have a breakfast routine. We have this little table in the kitchen with a nice window so we get to feed the squirrels and look at the birds and do coffee and just BS in the morning for work. Most importantly at that time is just taking notes for the day. I do a lot of just lists and prioritization. Do I want to work on several things or is this a day where I really should focus on one, one particular project or one problem? Is there anything that I need to do today or anything that I want to do and then what’s for dinner? I try to cook every day, so whatever’s for dinner is really important. Do I need to go shopping to get some ingredients? And that’s a fun process of just designing dinner every day. Then usually do some chores before ramping into the actual workday. It’s nice to just kind of clear my head, get some stuff done, essentially get some dopamine going and then get into the workday which is, I don’t know, that could be very different. It’s a lot of writing and reading. Most days design developing would be playtesting some math or programming and then that’ll go on for maybe three or four hours. Then go do do dinner and hang out. That’s like playtime, free playtime at home you just do some socializing with people outside. And in the evenings I like to do work where people don’t expect things of me anymore in the evenings. So it’s nice to buckle down and do maybe some reading. Or I like to read rule books and then watch Rule teaches for games. And then sometimes if I’m lucky and have inspiration, I’ll spend nights doing long form work like make 100 cards for a game or solve this very specific math problem for something or program a bunch of assets.

Rob:
Wow, long days, plenty of stuff going on. It sounds very, very exciting. I used to do a little bit of work at night until I started appreciating when I am able to sleep. Having a 2 year old at home changed my life in many amazing ways. Some of them include the fact that we sometimes do need to get some good sleep in and it’s also very, very important. But anyways, Michael, that sounds like very, very exciting. Good stuff going on. Let’s actually make a shift now. As you know, we always ask our guests to think of a time where things did not go well. A first attempt of learning, a fail moment, a failure, however you want to name it. We essentially Want to be there when you’re telling that story. We want to be there with you. Learn maybe one of those lessons that you took out of that. And if you came out of it in one way or another, we also want to see how you did that.

Michael Yang:
Sure, yeah, I guess I have two stories, one from really early in my career and one a little later. And I’ll start with the one early in my career because I think it really set me up for the next decade after that. So I moved to Wisconsin from the east coast of the US So kind of like the less populated area. I’ve never been to anywhere but the coast of the US and so it was all very different. But I moved there to work on video games. And the first video game I worked on I was given a lot of ownership over the project and it was all very exciting and I was working with a team of people that were also kind of like my age, like youngish people, all very bright eyed and excited to do the work. There’s a Filament games where they do a lot of work for higher educational games. And I think at that time it was hard to. I think in retrospect I lacked a lot of humility. I think I just was a little too fond of my own ideas or not necessarily confrontational about ideas. But I think there was always the thought of having to prove a certain idea is good. And I think it led to a lot of friction on the team and to the extent where it ended up kind of like demotivating other people on the team from doing good work. And I worked with that team for about a year and a half and the first maybe three or four months of that was just kind of like rummaging through interpersonal issues. And really I think a lot of growing up for me personally. But then after that, now I’m good friends with all of them. I believe the whole team is only like four people, but all of them still work in video games. So it cool to just. We’re all in different parts of the world now, but it’s cool to just come back and say, hey, do you remember we did this thing that was cool. What are you doing now? And you can always tell how much we all learned during that experience. So I think it was a failure in the sense that it kind of sucked. It was emotionally taxing for everyone and I think I definitely could have done a lot better. But it’s nice to have gone through that experience. I think I would be a worse person not having gone through that friction you know, and. Yeah, much better now. Yeah. Should I go into the other.

Rob:
Yeah, if you want to get into that for sure, sure.

Michael Yang:
Yeah. This time I got appendicitis. I ended up taking a job making a shift to a different video game company, getting paid more money, but working on games that I wouldn’t necessarily play or honestly really even respect. And this kind of like in the realm of free to play games that are like fast follows, where there’s a game that’s successful in the market, a company notices this, has enough budget for doing some of their own unique art and development, and end up designing a game that’s very similar to something that is already proven successful in the market, and then releasing, putting a lot of money into marketing and ads to kind of like siphon off some of the success from some other projects. And it was nice. I really loved working with the people at that company. Again, it was not. It wasn’t as problematic. I think I had already been developing for a few years at that point, but I could tell that. That the people there were more focused on the work. You know, you’re told you’re giving very specific direction. You work in that direction, you do the best you can, you hit the timelines, and then you go home. You don’t even necessarily play your games. I don’t think anyone really shared their games. Kind of had the compulsion to share their games outside of the work environment.

Rob:
That’s not a great sign.

Michael Yang:
Yeah. Yeah, right. Yeah. It’s certainly an avenue that. Where people can show a lot of passion for a project and sharing it. And I think my body kind of assumed a lot of the stress from that environment, where I would have talks daily with coworkers, where it’s like, we would all want to do this differently or that differently. Like, oh, this is a good idea. Everyone agrees we want to do this and then not really be able to do anything about that. And I think so. The failure ultimately was kind of like a career choice failure because I knew that I was exchanging my passion for money to a certain extent. I’ve been working in educational games for a long time and really loved the work, but it was tough to get work. It’s all client work. The budgets for the games were as low as $20,000, $10,000 for a game just based off of some government grant versus this other company, which they have hundreds of thousands of dollars, millions of dollars for marketing. So it’s a huge shift. And I didn’t really realize at the time how much I was sacrificing how much artistry, like game development artistry, that I was sacrificing for that paycheck. So I actually left that company only after two years. But it was another good experience to have gone through working at a larger company and now it actually led me to making my own game and having more confidence in working on my own game.

Rob:
Cool, cool, good stuff. So plenty of lessons there. I think one of the main things for me at least is realizing where your purpose is and what it is that you want to achieve. And if you are exchanging one thing for the other, to do it consciously and make sure it’s a choice that you’re making and that you’re willing to take that choice is difficult because otherwise, as you were saying, your body is feeling those things and it’s going to respond, it’s going to react to all that you share that you ended up having appendicitis?

Michael Yang:
Oh yeah. And then quit Right after I got appendicitis. I was out of work for two months and then when I came back to work day one, I sat at my desk and was like, oh right, I have to have all these conversations that, that give me answers that are really just going to make my stomach hurt again. And then I think maybe I lasted two more months after that and then I had to quit. But then that ultimately led to becoming a full time designer and then working on board games somehow.

Rob:
Amazing. Amazing. That sounds like everything is experienced in the end. Failure is not fatal, it’s not final, as we like to say. So all good stuff and actually shift into a success. Something that you would actually be proud of sharing, like how it went, what were some of the success factors, like how did you get there? Whatever part of the story you want to share and that we are very pleased to share that journey with you essentially.

Michael Yang:
Yeah, I guess right now I’m still working through the success of Compile. It’s been really surprising, I think as I was developing it I would always have these thoughts of like, oh, it’d be so cool if this reviewer reviewed my game and liked it. And that would be like a aspirational thought that I have. And at this point now there’s so many reviewers that have done content and it’s a very, very humbling and I really wasn’t ready for that kind of success. And there’s a few core pieces that I think allowed me to do it. One was, I think that story about the career shift from those mobile games, like away from those mobile games, I think gave me a lot of clarity. On what kind of games I wanted to and how unique that was. Not that my tastes are unique, but I think we all play tons of games. Hopefully. Hopefully we save lots of room for play and then that expresses itself in different ways if you just kind of give it time to express itself. So right at the start of COVID I think a big success was starting to work from home. That helped a lot. Like I bought a house and started to rake leaves and pick up snow and, you know, bring bags of garbage to the dump. And that all that was all like a lot of new responsibility that helped put it let me kind of get rid of all the chaff that I collected with regards to game development. And then my wife was such a huge supporter. I think she believed in me a lot more than I believed in myself. And I think it was a great success to believe in her belief in me. And so, yeah, after I quit that job and my wife was so supportive, we played a bunch of games. I had no idea what I was going to do. And then I went back to just that unique experience. I grew up playing a lot of magic. My older brother, he owned thousands of magic cards. And I remember one day we never really got along until one day he gave me his big box of magic cards and we sat on the floor for like six hours just reading cards. And it had been a while since he played, so it’s kind of like surprising for both of us. We’d look at this card and like, oh man, this card’s so cool. I’d like, you know, Pat, like pass it along to him and we’d talk about what we want to do with that card and just like so much detail packed into like this little piece of paper. And then from there I played so many card games and I realized in retrospect how many of my like really valuable relationships I’ve had with people had to do specifically with just like one on one dueling card games. And then in that process of just appreciating that, that that was my life, I realized how much I had to say with regard, like how like I like tempo decks. Like, I don’t want to do big combo decks. Like, I don’t want to spend a lot of money to get for. To get individual chase cards and I don’t want to open packs of random cards. And all these little bits of taste that I collected throughout the years ultimately led to me working on compile, which I think being able to collect that direction and kind of crystallize that direction over time was what was able to bring me to success.

Rob:
Awesome. Sounds amazing. And Michael, I’m sure that there is a lot of detail to get into. You’ve been this for over. Over a decade, as you were mentioning. But in a gist, in two, three, maybe five minutes, if you were to share how is the process of designing, creating a game from scratch, what would that look like? And again, you can go for card games, you can go for educational games that you’ve designed as well. Is there anything that you can share in that sense? Again, not the super detail, because we would spend the whole podcast just in that there’s a lot of inside knowledge that you must have there. But what would that overall look like, perhaps?

Michael Yang:
Yeah, I think there’s a lot of commonalities between both board games and video games. So I guess I’ll start there with just games in general. And I think a lot of it is really just art in general. And the first most important question to me is just who’s this for? Obviously the endeavor is something that I’m doing, so it’s for me because I’m doing it. It’s a decision to make a game. I don’t think people make games by accident. So who’s it? What problem am I trying to solve? What constraints do that person has? What skills are they bringing to the table? And then after that I think it forks depending on the ultimate shape of the product. Is this something for a client or is this something that I’m doing for myself? Maybe I want to self publish or pitch or maybe it’s something that, you know, the. For that first question, I had a very specific person and it’s like a friend and my friend likes foxes. So I really wanted to make a game about foxes digging dens. So, you know, they’re very different shapes. But I think the ultimate question after who is it for? Is like, how much time? How much time do I have for this? How much energy do I have to devote to this thing? And I think that kind of leads into the next part of just like. Like what are these constraints that we can put on ourselves? How can I constrain my thinking and focus it in a direction that actually addresses the problems I’m trying to fix or tackle for that singular person, maybe real or maybe not real, that this game is for. Then it’s a lot of brainstorming, a lot of writing. Like I do lots of notes, sketches. I really love the Google suite, so using slides or Google Docs to collate information and then kind of get ready to share Information. I think, you know, all art is to be experienced. So I think starting as early as possible, getting to the point where you can share something with people is really powerful, Crucial. Yeah. Just getting feedback and really getting into the process of sharing with new people. I think it’s very different. I make games all the time and it’s easy for me to go downstairs and show a prototype to my wife and be like, can I get 20 minutes? Let me just talk to you about this. And she’ll be very positive. And always, every idea is great. Michael Yang is the best designer in the world. But it’s nice to get through that process, get some of that positive feedback and kind of build up momentum. Because really, I want to try to find new people that I don’t work with regularly, that don’t do the game, don’t play the game, like maybe the genre that I’m working on, and get those people’s feedback. Because ultimately I start this process by thinking of a particular person and that person’s needs. But in the end, there’s always the hope that your game is played by thousands of people and the people at that scale work differently. The needs of a thousand people is different from the needs of any particular one person.

Rob:
Of course, because I was going to ask there. I agree that, of course, the more people you can get on, the more exciting it sounds. But then how do you balance that with not losing focus? Because there has to be a focus. If it’s a thousand, it’s a thousand, or if it’s 100,000, it’s 100,000, but it’s not. Not 1 billion people in the whole wide world. Like, and there’s. When there’s absolute variety, it’s for no one. So how do you keep it for those thousand, ten, thousand, hundred, like, whatever the number is, which is still not everyone.

Michael Yang:
Yeah, yeah. And I think, yeah, you don’t ever want to find yourself in a position where you’re trying to target anyone or everyone. And I think you kind of. You definitely lose a bit of yourself. And I think as you go through the. As you go through the development process, like keeping your own level of quality and values alive and kind of like growing with the process, I think is also super important. And then, yeah, as. Then you go into making stuff, and then as I’m making stuff, iterating just being humble about what you’re making, ideas are so cheap and they’re everywhere. And I think a lot of people, there’s kind of this, like, people think there’s bad ideas I really don’t believe in the. In bad ideas. I think bad ideas or just any idea that isn’t explored is a bad idea because I think people have ideas that are rooted in something real, like some emotion, some experience that that person has. They have an idea and it’s worth picking apart to find out what is the truth behind this idea. Like, oh, this person may want to do this in some card game. Is it because they want to feel clever? Do they want to feel seen, powerful? Do they view themselves as maybe some sort of scientist that’s tinkering with things and they want to have a hypothesis and then prove that hypothesis? So, yeah, as I’m making things, definitely finding those different types of people to show and get feedback and kind of shape your own expectations for the project, because really that’s what’s going to carry it through. And then lastly, checking scope, always thinking about, again, how much time do I have? And now that I know more and I know better because I’ve done some things and tested some things, what changes about the project at the end does that get. Usually get smaller? I think just like a reality of just working on games. I think we all have lots of things that we want to do and it’s not necessarily for the best. So, yeah, how do we prioritize things and then get to that really crystallized direction that I think the earlier you get it, the more time it has to give you benefits as you continue working.

Rob:
Cool, cool. Love it, Love it. We went into plenty of steps here. I think there’s many things that we’ve discussed here before, but I love it. Michael, we’re getting to the quick round of Fire Round, so to speak, the quick answers. Is there any best practice that you’ve seen in game design or these things that can help people out there? Like what would that be? I don’t know. You were talking about playtesting early. You mentioned reviewing Scope. There’s many things that you mentioned there. Maybe one of them is a best practice in your. In your view.

Michael Yang:
Yeah, I think iterating, definitely getting stuff in front of people as quickly as possible, getting that feedback, holding your own values. I don’t think you should compromise your values when you get any sort of feedback, but definitely doing that as frequently as possible. And I think on the other side, to get harder at that idea of having your own tastes is just experience a lot of art, play lots of games. I call playing games doing work. And I think, yeah, research and I think that way of framing. I used to think it was Silly. And now that I’ve done it for a long time, I really appreciate thinking about it that way because there is a difference between me playing a game that I’ve played for 100 hours already versus a game that I only just heard of. And I’m starting my first hour. I can. I can definitely get something new from experience in really any art form.

Rob:
Absolutely. Absolutely. And Michael, keeping up the recommendations, is there anybody you would like to hear answering the questions that you’ve answered now in the podcast? Somebody that makes you curious, somebody you look up to or, I don’t know, whatever that looks like.

Michael Yang:
Yeah, I’m really trying to get into board games, so I think there’s a few designers that stick out. Richard Garfield, he’s made so many games. There’s been even modern games that I’ve played and enjoyed and didn’t realize after the fact that they were made by Richard Garfield. So I would love to hear anything from him.

Rob:
Sounds fantastic. Fantastic. Totally. In that same vein, how about a book? Is there a book that you would recommend us to read? The Engagers.

Michael Yang:
I think Sci fi, really anything Sci fi is nice. Something that is. Doesn’t need to be bogged down with contemporary thinking. Give you a different world to look at, but upon deeper inspection, is very related to our current world. I think being able to travel back and forth through time or through concepts gives you a lot of space to come up with your own ideas. And then for game design in general, I really like A Book of Lenses. I think that’s what it’s called by Jesse Schell. And it offers. I think it’s like 100 different ways to look at your game. That’s a little bit of the tagline where it gives you. It’s like, here’s a little sentence that describes the perspective that you can take just for a moment and look at your game through that perspective. And then here are some questions that you can ask yourself via that perspective to gain more insight about what you’re working on. And that’s awesome.

Rob:
We’ve been talking about art and it’s the art of game design at Book of Lenses by Jesse.

Michael Yang:
Oh, yeah, yeah. Yep. Yeah. Art of game design. Yep. That’s what it is.

Rob:
I mean, it was funny that we’ve been talking about it and it’s precisely the title of the book. Yeah. Love it, love it, love it. And in fact, he’s episode 102 or something like that on the podcast, if you’re curious in hearing Jesse. He’s awesome. Absolutely cool. From Shell Games. And we get to a very difficult question now. What would you say is your favorite game?

Michael Yang:
Oh, man. Yeah, that’s tough because there’s. I don’t play MMOs anymore, massive multiplayer online games anymore. But I played them for so long and so much of who I am today is really, really anchored on like doing 40 person raids in World of Warcraft. So I think, you know, for. From like looking at my whole life, I think I would say my favorite game, even though I don’t play it anymore, is World of Warcraft has been so inspirational and I still talk to so many of those people and they’re such good people and to just have that core of experience to like keep connecting with them. One of the beautiful things about games giving you rules and ways to interact with people is very beautiful. And then most recently my wife and I have enjoyed Keep the Heroes Out. That’s like a really cute cooperative game and we’ve just been playing that for hours every day.

Rob:
Sounds like a good one too. So thanks for those answers. Michael, we’re getting to the end of the episode. Is there anything else you want to let us know where we can find out more about you, your work, the game that you’re launching as well? Anything? This is the final part of the episode. It’s up to you.

Michael Yang:
Yeah, I guess one quote that I really love is choose again. I’d leave that with everyone. Have ideas, change them, change everything all the time. Be critical about the choices you make and then try something different and then you’ll learn things and then, yeah, if you want to ask me questions, I really like doing things by email. So it’s justgravyllcmail.com for any personal stuff. And then for board game stuff, I have an account on boardgamegeek where I do a lot of rules, answers and just answering art questions, which is jessgrav on Board Game Geek.

Rob:
Awesome, awesome. We’ll put those in the show notes. I’m not sure about the email because you’ll get a lot of spam bots on the show days, but you know, it’ll definitely be there. Thanks again Michael, for sharing your knowledge, your experience, everything, all of the awesome stuff that you’ve done up until now. However, Michael and Engagers, as you know, at least for now and for today, it is time to say that it’s game over. Hey Engagers, and thank you for listening to the Professor Game Game podcast. And since you are into gamification and game inspired solutions, how about you go into the free gamification course that we have for you. Just go to professorgame.com freegamification work course all one word professorgame.com freegamifications course and get started today for free. After that we will also be in contact and you will be the first to know of any opportunities that Professor K might have for you. And remember, before you go on to your next mission, before you click Continue, please remember to subscribe using your favorite podcast app and listen to the next episode of Professor Game. See you there.

End of transcription