Think Like A Game Designer

About Amabel Holland
Amabel Holland is a prolific board game designer, developer, and publisher who, as co-founder of Hollandspiele, has been responsible for over a hundred board games and expansions. Much of her deeply experimental work explores the potential of tabletop games as political art, how rule systems create cultural meaning, and the nature of games as living artifacts. In a profile by The New Yorker, she was cited as “widely considered one of today’s most innovative game designers” a title she remains humble about, but graciously accepts. A lifelong resident of the Detroit area, Amabel also creates documentaries exploring uncredited 20th-century designers in her free time. In this episode, we unpack how she built a self-publishing model where “even her flops are successful,” how game mechanics can model real-world systems of oppression, and how her evolving personal journey shifted her design focus from processing pain to crafting pure joy.
* Find Amabel on Youtube and Hollandspiele.com
Ah-ha! Justin’s Takeaways
* Even My Flops Are Successful: Build a business model that protects your creative freedom instead of trapping you under a mountain of inventory debt. By using print-on-demand for Hollandspiele, Amabel bypasses massive manufacturing and warehouse costs, so even her smallest, weirdest games turn a profit. Once you take away that financial risk, you give yourself total permission to take wild design swings on niche ideas traditional publishers wouldn’t touch with a ten-foot pole.
* Pain Makes Good Art, But Not Happy Artists: Channeling personal rage, grief, and societal injustice can yield profound, critically acclaimed masterpieces like This Guilty Land or Doubt Is Our Product. At the same time, marinating in heavy, painful subject matter for years takes a real mental toll on the creator. As Amabel worked through personal grief and found genuine daily happiness, her design work naturally transitioned toward joyful, fun experiences like Dragon Pizza. It’s a good reminder that while pain can fuel powerful art, your long-term happiness and mental health as a human being should always come first.
Show Notes
“Taking a move in a board game is not as intuitive as moving in a video game. It’s not as immersive as watching a film. And you can use that distance to try to have people think about what the game is representing, think about systems.” (00:09:50)
Unlike movies or video games, board games have a built-in superpower: physical distance. Because players have to manually flip through rulebooks and move pieces around, they aren't just zoning out in total immersion. You can use that deliberate friction to get players to pause, look under the hood, and actually think about the real-world systems you’re modeling.
“It’s a game presented as a, an alien artifact with a rule book written in a iconographic language that you have to translate, and I will not answer questions about whether you got it right or not.” (00:13:00)
Never underestimate how hungry players are for mystery. Amabel assumed City of Six Moons, which is a game with no text and an undeciphered alien rulebook, would only appeal to a tiny niche, but it became her biggest hit. When you take a risk and build something completely uncompromising, players may step up, form communities, and invest deeply to decode your vision.
“The margins for print on demand are not are not gonna let you have a full-time living in New York City generally, right?” (00:27:50)
High overhead can destroy creative freedom. By keeping her living costs low and operating out of an affordable spot like Detroit, Amabel built a real fortress around her lifestyle. When you strip away huge monthly bills, you never have to sell out your artistic vision or chase generic trends just to keep the lights on.
“For me, the worst thing would be a game where you do bad things, and the game wags its finger at you.” (00:51:25)
If your game forces a player to inhabit a villain or navigate heavy moral compromises, don’t lecture them through your mechanics. Shaming a player for executing the exact actions your game instructed them to take completely breaks player trust. Use abstract presentation and thoughtful mechanical distance so players can analyze the system objectively rather than feeling cheapened by preachy moralizing.
P.S. If you are interested in working with me directly on your project, and learning from my mistakes rather than making your own, you can join my Think Like a Game Designer: Design Lab.
You can find Think Like a Game Designer on these platforms:


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About Elizabeth Hargrave
Elizabeth Hargrave is an award-winning board game designer best known for her runaway smash hit Wingspan, which won the Kennerspiel des Jahres in 2019 and has sold over two million copies worldwide. Her diverse body of work, including Tussie-Mussie, Mariposas, The Fox Experiment, Undergrove, and Sanibel, explores rich corners of the natural world. Elizabeth recently released Wingspan Pocket, an absolute masterclass in distilling the core of Wingspan into an accessible, 30-minute, small-box game.
Beyond design, she is a co-founder of the Tabletop Game Designers Association (TTGDA), where she champions a games industry that embraces diverse voices and respects the labor, creativity, and intellectual property of designers. In this returning episode, Elizabeth and I break down the mechanics of condensing big games into small boxes, the mission behind the TTGDA, and an honest, nuanced debate about generative AI, human intent, and the ethics of art.
Connect with Elizabeth:
* Elizabeth’s Website
* Wingspan Pocket
* bluesky: @elizhargrave
Ah-ha! Justin’s Takeaways
* Don’t Fall Asleep at the Wheel with AI: As machine tools get faster and more accurate, there’s a real danger of falling asleep at the wheel. Even if a model seems 95% or 99% reliable, never trust the machine over real human playtesting and lived player experience. Stay actively engaged in your process, verify your data, and remember that an algorithm can never replace the authentic human feedback loop.
* Elegance is Deep Decisions with Fewer Rules: True game design elegance comes from the depth of player decisions while drastically stripping back the rules and components. Wingspan Pocket is a perfect execution of this exact principle. By shrinking setup friction and focusing on pure decision-making, it proves you don’t need a massive box or tons of tokens to deliver a rich, weighty experience.
* Contract Details Matter (Even for Pros): Every single detail in a publisher contract matters, and you should never just blindly sign away your hard work. Look, I literally went to law school before I became a full-time game designer, and I still hire a lawyer to review my contracts! That’s why the work Elizabeth is doing with the TTGDA is so vital—giving emerging designers the tools and guidance they need to negotiate better deals.
Show Notes
“What would (Wingspan) look like to have a smaller version a more accessible version?” (00:05:40)
Mass market retail doesn’t always require dumbing down your initial design. Wingspan proved that mainstream audiences at Target were eager to embrace a heavier hobby game, and iterating a pocket-sized, highly accessible version opens up a massive second wave of players who want that same engine-building magic without the setup footprint or intimidation factor.
“But the actual ideas I don’t want to outsource. There’s a thing I’m trying to say.” (00:32:00)
Elizabeth hits the philosophical heart of why we design games. Even as technology evolves to automate statistics, spreadsheets, or playtest simulations, the fundamental creative spark, the specific human perspective you want to express about the world, cannot be outsourced to an algorithm. Games matter because they connect one person’s lived experience to another’s around the table.
“We put out a little position paper recently. When you talk about games, don’t just say who it’s published by, name the designer.” (00:54:40)
How the industry uses language dictates how it values creators. Shifting public habits from “published by X” to prominently crediting the individual designer isn’t just about ego; it treats game design with the exact same authorial respect we give to novelists, directors, and playwrights. Normalizing designer attribution builds long-term equity for every creator in the space.
“Because I feel like that’s there’s a whisper network. You hear about publishers that you don’t wanna work with, but if you’re a brand new designer and you don’t have the connections to hear those things, then you could end up working with people that you would rather not work with. I love being able to get that information to people who need it.” (00:56:30)
Industry protection shouldn’t depend on who you happen to know at the bar. By creating peer-driven support networks through the TTGDA and formalizing contract reviews, Elizabeth is turning insider knowledge into a public resource, ensuring new designers are armed with real data before signing away their IP.



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About Scott Morris
Scott Morris is the founder and CEO of Steel Wing Games, a boutique tabletop publisher focused on approachable, high-quality games, as well as the Global Brand Director for Lucky Duck Games under Goliath. A two-decade industry veteran, Scott previously served as Chief Sales and Marketing Officer at Lucky Duck and President of Passport Game Studios. His latest project, Rainbow Boulevard (designed by Adam Wyse), represents a decade-long journey of patience, personal resilience, and deep human connection. In this deeply moving episode, Scott shares the origin of Steel Wing Games, the harrowing personal tragedy that put his career on pause, and why game publishers aren’t just selling boxes, they’re building lifelong memories. Plus, we unpack the mechanics of eliminating player downtime, the shift from positions to principles in design debates, and what it really takes to launch a crowdfunding campaign today.


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About Ben
Ben Robbins is an acclaimed indie game designer best known for creating Microscope, In This World, Kingdom, and This Means War. Ben’s flagship design, Microscope, revolutionized GM-less storytelling games by allowing players to collaboratively build vast, non-linear histories from the top down. In this returning appearance on the podcast, Ben and I dive deep into the psychological hurdles of revisiting a beloved, successful game to create Microscope v2. We explore the creative trick of fooling yourself to bypass pressure, the design spectrum between "wings vs. rails," and why opening your playtesting process up to the public saves time while yielding better results. Plus, we break down his experimental new game This Means War (which strips narrative control away from players) and engage in a passionate, honest debate on the role and impact of AI in the future of game design.


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About Ryan S. Dancey
Ryan S. Dancey is an absolute titan of the gaming industry whose strategic vision has fundamentally shaped the modern tabletop and digital landscapes. Ryan co-created Legend of the Five Rings, published the 3rd Edition of Dungeons & Dragons, and spearheaded the creation of the revolutionary Open Gaming License (OGL) alongside an elite team at Wizards of the Coast—a move that forever altered the trajectory of role-playing games. His entrepreneurial journey spans from bootstrapping a "fake" mail-order company that accidentally became real, to orchestrating Wizards’ historic acquisition of TSR, to living in Reykjavik as CMO for CCP Games working on EVE Online, and serving a decade as Chief Operating Officer at AEG (publisher of the Spiel des Jahres winner Cascadia). Today, Ryan serves as President of Wide Pacific Horizon, a strategic consulting and content creation firm based in Everett, Washington. In this episode, we unpack the wild dawn of the '90s TCG boom, the mechanics of collectible economies, what it takes to pull off industry-defining business deals, and a deeply honest, transparent conversation about the reality of AI and the future of creative work.
Connect with Ryan:
* Website: widepacifichorizon.com
* LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/rsdancey
* BlueSky: @ryandancey.com
Ah-ha! Justin’s Takeaways
* The Fine Line Between Self-Belief and Arrogance: To be a successful entrepreneur, you have to possess an almost irrational confidence in your ability to figure things out. When you are young or broke, you take wild leaps because you truly believe you will survive the fall. Look, you don’t need to have every answer on day one, but having the intrinsic belief that you can pivot, adapt, and learn on the fly is what separates dreamers from builders.
* The Math and Mechanics of TCG Booms: Trading card games are powered by an irresistibly addictive loop of intermittent positive reinforcement and a healthy, long-term TCG ecosystem requires a delicate balance across three distinct groups: competitive players, casual collectors, and serious collectors/investors. If your game tilts too heavily toward speculation without a solid player base, the bubble will inevitably burst when investors run out of buyers.
* Practice with AI : We are living through a civilizational inflection point right now with machine learning. While the origins of these models come with thorny ethical questions, hiding your head in the sand will only leave you behind. These tools are democratizing production, allowing single creators to execute projects that used to require entire studios.


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