The “Evolution of Expansion or Extinction (EOE)” is an article series appearing in InsideGMT periodically.  It features articles from the designer regarding the game’s design, development and upcoming release.

Today’s Topic:  How did this game appear seemingly out of nowhere?

A number of people have commented that this game just seemed to “appear’ on the GMT P500 list, seemingly out of nowhere.

I suspect that there are many different types of games designers, with many different types of styles of working. Folks who gather a large collaborative team, others who document every step of their design process online. I’m more in the “work by myself with a small group of contributor’s” category. Also as a first time designer, there was a certain amount of hesitation about sharing what I was doing…what if it didn’t work? What if the whole concept was off, or not fun to play? A certain amount of self-doubt exists the first time you try something new, and it certainly colored my attitude about sharing what I was doing. Lastly I know myself pretty well; I have a drawer full of game ideas, which have never gotten beyond the “jot a few notes down” stage. I didn’t want to publicly state I was going to do something, and not follow through.

In actuality, EOE is the result of years of development. I am lucky enough to be part of a weekly game group, which has been playing games together for over a decade. When Triumph and Tragedy (T&T) first came out, we couldn’t get it off the gaming table…we loved it…and shared it with all of our gaming friends. This group of gamers loves the creative design process, and is equally engaged talking game design as in actually playing games! I am lucky enough to have in that group, a friend/gaming opponent who has already been twice published, Ron Draker, so I know that it can be done and was able to learn from his experiences. Second is the fact that EOE is based on the proven “engine” of Triumph and Tragedy (T&T). EOE had a tremendous head start in the design process. Third is that while EOE is my first design, I have a number of contributor credits in various block games. As a young gamer, I learned the standards such as Advanced Third Reich…but as I’ve matured, I’ve grown to appreciate both the simplicity and the intricacy of the block game system…which is where I’ve earned my contributor credits.

As I said, we loved the T&T system, and immediately started thinking about other conflicts which would work seamlessly within that engine. Quite of number of suggestions were made and discarded, some put on the back burner, but it soon became apparent that a space 4X would be the best fit for the next game in the T&T series. And so work began on “Space T&T” (my working title for EOE). Not only would it work well for a 3-player game, but I was able to scale it both up (4-player) and down (with a different map to a two player game). Adding the “Explore” aspect added another fun/challenging aspect to the game…continuing the evolution of T&T engine!

After over a year of solid work on EOE, and with the encouragement of my contributors, I felt that EOE was in a place for me to let GMT know about the game…yes, I was working totally in the darkness! I made a serious push in the months before Winter Prezcon 2017 to get the game finished and ready to show off. (Prezcon had been my “go-to” convention for many years before a new work assignment forced me to miss several years.) I knew that Andy Lewis from GMT would be at Prezcon starting on Thursday and vowed to introduce myself and my game to him.

Andy runs the GMT booth at Prezcon and Thursday morning, I introduced myself and asked if he would be interested in seeing my game design. He said that he’d be interested, but that time at the convention was always tight…however he could spare 30 minutes for me that evening at 8 PM. I was both elated and nervous! Everything that I had been doing/working on would come down to a 30 minute interview! I gathered a couple of my contributors, Ron and Kevin Garber (who has done playtest work for GMT previously) and was ready at 8PM to show off my game. Six hours later (at 2 in the morning) I had to shut down the conversation…I was exhausted, both physically and emotionally. The good news, Andy was very interested (hence the amount of time he was willing to give to me)…the bad news, Andy thought that the game was about 80% done. He gave me a list of things to work on (looking at how to produce the game…rather than just design the game). One of the things on my list was to reach out to Craig Besinque (whose T&T design so heavily influenced my game).

A year later, in February of 2018, I was back at Prezcon, having addressed all of the things on Andy’s “to-do” list. We again sat down for a game of EOE. Andy was impressed with the progress of the game and gave the green light to move ahead with the project. GMT finalized the negotiations with Craig to bring EOE into the T&T series family and EOE made the P500 list!

Next steps?

• Having spent all of this time working in the wilderness (so to say), it’s time to get the word out and share EOE with the gaming world.
• Expand the playtesting process…the game plays really well with my core group of gamers…but it’s time to finalize the rules (art and layout) and then see if the rules as written really say what I think they say!
• Ask for feedback. What would you like to know about EOE?  Let me know and it very well might end up as a blog article here at InsideGMT!

Articles in this Series: Part 1  Part 2  Part 3  Part 4

Author: Stuart Pierce