Design and development are the fundamental elements of any game. Rigorously iterating, combing the design file, and playtesting over and over again. The saddest part of the process is the lesson we must keep learning in creative pursuits—Kill. Your. Darlings. I learned the lesson anew yet again designing this game. The team and I designed over 1200 cards for a 350-card set. Lots of cuts had to happen. Some were easier than others, but each provided valuable advice for the future.
Here's a few of the cards you won't see in the first edition of I Feel Attacked! and what they taught me about developing a game.
For context: I Feel Attacked! asks players to take traits and behaviors some people have, then match them up with other traits such people might also have. For example, People Who have vanity license plates might also be People Who don't use their turn signal, or be People Who have no problem eating the last slice of pizza.
Box-Checking Isn't Enough
"People Who don't talk to family members anymore over politics"
This one seemed like a homerun. It's topical; it kinda dunks on one type of person, but will most often be played by those same people; and it hits almost everyone close to home. People would see this card and immediately have emotional resonance, and know someone it applies to. It checks so many of the "yes" boxes, I thought it was a shoo-in.
But early on, I knew this was going to get the chop. Two things became obvious with just a few plays:
The card is narrower than it looks. Though it appears to be about absolutism on both sides of the aisle, in practice it's much more common for the young progressive person to stop talking to the "crazy" conservative uncle, while the conservative uncle is more than happy to continue engaging about the Q conspiracy du jour. So it can only be played with cards that apply to young progressives. Though that's not a deal-breaker, it's a warning flag at least.
The emotions it resonates aren't fun. It's really easy when designing an "edgy" game to lean in to those softball triggers that get everyone's goat and facilitate discussion—even if it's negative discussion. But there's a line between griping about People Who stand up as soon as the plane lanes, even though no one is deboarding and conjuring up why you don't talk to your father anymore. Even cards like People who stormed the U.S. capitol on 1/6, despite it's extremely negative baggage, often feels cathartic for people when they play it. Ongoing broken family ties does not.
This card that seemed to check all the boxes just didn't play how it'd felt on the page. This leads me to a story about heartbreak.
I once flew to Sweden and dumped myself. True story. I was dating an admittedly younger girl who was one of the smartest people I'd ever met. But no matter how intelligent you are, there are some social lessons you can only learn with experience. And while I was there, it was clear something was off. I forced the issue, and she understandably had trouble pinning down what wasn't working, and couldn't articulate why she wasn't happy.
I realized that she hadn't yet learned the box-checking lesson—the exact thing People Who don't talk to family members taught me in game designing. In her mind, I had all the things that she wanted, and she couldn't understand why all the checkmarks didn't add up. But sometimes expectation and reality just don't jive. Often it's not articulable at the time (though I'm sure she has a laundry list of reasons why I suck now), but when the reality doesn't line up with the expectation, whatever the reason, you have to let it go.
So after a long discussion I said something to the effect of "Welp, guess we shouldn't date anymore." I bought an early flight home and was soon dating a lesbian. But that's a story for a different time. Or never.
Just like I was to her, People who don't talk to family members anymore over politics seemed like it was one of the good ones, but it's just not right, and you can't force right.
Get as many perspectives as you can, and know your demo cold
"People Who lie about having read Infinite Jest"
I still love this card so much. I hope I can use it in a Millennials Feel Attacked! booster expansion or something. This one had the whole designers room laughing, and it made me feel like a king.
One problem: I'm not designing for my designers.
Early on, I thought the I Feel Attacked! demo was 25-45—the classic "Cards Against Humanity" set. But I quickly discovered that I Feel Attacked! is much broader than CAH, and I found myself redeveloping everything to be as inclusive as possible. (Who knew that 70-year-olds also like being kinda judgy??)
In every single playtest, this card was a problem. People had no idea what the reference was, and even if they did, they didn't know what it said about someone to lie about it. After explaining that Infinite Jest is like the contemporary Ulysses for the tenth time, it was clear this wasn't going to work in the base set.
It reminds me of a dumb joke I've been telling for twenty years even though literally no one has laughed at it. Ever. In a situation where you should say "You're a gentleman and a scholar," I instead say, "You're an officer and a gentleman." It's become an experiment to see if I can get one person to laugh, so I can lift the curse.
I'm willing to make jokes that don't play in my personal life, but not cards that don't. I can't keep forcing the issue. My demo has changed, and I'm not making cards just to pop my friends (though there are plenty of cards that still do that). David Foster Wallace will have to wait. (You see, he wrote Infinite J—you know what, nevermind.)
I still love this one though. If you think I'm nuts for cutting it, e-mail me and let me know. I need validation for my clearly wrong feelings. Don't email me about the joke though. I know it's terrible, thanks.
Tone is key, and don't be clever
"People Who have forty-pound keychains with so many dangling charms it looks like a
goddamn medieval mace, I mean Jesus, Sheila, c'mon"
We had fun workshopping this one. In a game of short little phrases, what about a card that was so frustrated at the "people who" it describes that it just couldn't stop itself from going on and on? I thought it could work as just a silly "ha-ha" when you read it. But people didn't read it. And when they did read it, even if they had a sensible chuckle, it just sat unused the entire game, and made them increasingly upset that my quirky sense of humor was gumming up their hand.
You know what? Sometimes things don't have to be clever. You don't have to insist to people that you're funny. And above all that, the point of a card isn't to be funny anyway; it's to play well. And if it doesn't play well, it shouldn't be in the game. So sometimes it shouldn't be funny when you read it at all—it should be funny when you play it.
I had no idea that People Who wear transition lenses would be funny. I thought it was stupid and would never be played. Instead, it's played all the time. It pairs with cards like People Who tuck polo shirts into khakis, People Who juggle, and People Who play trombone. That's funny. And what do those cards have in common? They aren't clever. You aren't laughing because I came up with a funny card and I'm oh-so smart; you're laughing because the player realized people who wear transition lenses probably play the trombone. Which is the whole point of the game, not you thinking I'm clever.
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All that to say, Kill your Darlings—no matter how many boxes they check; no matter how much they pop the other designers; no matter how clever they make you seem.
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Thanks for reading. As always, send me comments, questions and what you'd like to see me write about.