Exiles: The Game An interview with Mindworm Games

MWG: The truth is that it’s just me, Jesse, and a few artists that we work with!

 It helps to have a shared vision, and in my view the key to creating that vision is to treat it as a collaboration. Here is my vision. How are you going to make it your own?

 I want to work consistently with talented artists who bring their own creative vision to the project. I want to work with people who get excited about what we are doing. If they’re not, then it’s just work, isn’t it? Where’s the fun in that?

 The key to building these relationships is to have a clear vision but also keep an open mind. My job is to get the artist’s creative juices flowing and provide a flexible framework that allows them to do their own thing. That’s how we get the kind of beautiful work we do from Adam, Hugh, and Marco.

 These guys are very much an integral part of the Exiles world, and we plan on working with them for as long as they are happy to work with us.

WC: Your site has a particular vernacular. In fact, the words “Fuckin’ Link” are prominently displayed on your home page, and this ‘fuckin link‘ in fact takes us to another page where the word ‘shithouse’ is prominently displayed. Clearly, as you state on the Exiles Gamepage, this ain’t your daddy’s wargame. So who is your target audience for these games and do you worry at all about alienating your demographic, whoever they may be? 

MWG:  HA! ‘particular vernacular’ is a nice way to put it.

There are a lot of folks in the market who treat games like ‘srs bizness’. I play games to relax, to have fun with my friends. I pay games to take life less seriously.

I want people to know that we are always going to have fun and we are never going to take ourselves too seriously. I also don’t want to spoil my own fun by worrying about mass market appeal.

 Exiles is inveterately raunchy and irreverent. It was inspired by works like Cannibal the Musical, Brisco County Jr., Ravenous, and The Valley of Gwanji. It can’t be done any other way.

 Exiles has a beautiful, B-movite type of charm. It is a horribly grim and gruesome world in which we somehow, against all odds, find room for a dick joke. I believe Exiles taps into a secret little place all of us have inside ourselves. A secret little place of childish immaturity buried by our fears and insecurities and daily responsibilities.

 Exiles gives you room to laugh at something terrible, be a little immature, and forget to watch your language. This is also what makes Cards Against Humanity so awesome. Why else would there be a card that says ‘Two midgets shitting in a bucket’?

 And frankly, take a look at the mass market appeal of that game. We are simply doing Exiles the way it was always done, but I think the game has been so special for so many people for so long because it fills the same sort of need that Cards Against Humanity so effectively fills.

MWG: Not at all. Spin casting is more important now than it ever was, and there will always be a place for spin casting in this market.

 The table top gaming market is exploding right now because the means of production are becoming more democratized. Advances in 3D printing have made digital sculpting a viable mainstream medium for table top miniatures, which has in turn made it far easier for artists to connect with prospective clients and publishers.

 Injection molding is becoming cheaper and more accessible as well, and Chinese manufacturers have found ways to make small batch production jobs viable. Combined with the rise in crowdfunding, this has made it easier than ever to produce a table top game from your laptop. But these types of games still have to be manufactured overseas, and they still require comparatively substantial capital to fund and a relatively rigid production format. Hence the boxed game.

 Resin casting is easier than ever now with plenty of resources at your fingertips, and laser engravers have become smaller, cheaper, and easier to use.

 And yet you still see metal miniatures from a huge swath of small, independent companies. The reason is that spin cast metal remains the simplest and cheapest form of mass production while at the same time offering the kind of flexibility and reliability that is critical to a small business, assuming you want to be in business for the long haul.

MWG:  For us, the flexibility of spin casting is absolutely critical. You can reclaim resin miscasts, but reclaiming metal is as simple as dropping the cast back into the melt pot. You can manufacture small volumes very quickly with cheap molds that last practically forever.

Because the labor is sweat equity for us, if a product isn’t selling we can simply turn it into a product that does sell without suffering a substantial loss. We can scale production up and down to meet demand, and we can be very flexible when it comes to customer demands.

I wouldn’t much mind spinning a mold to get 10 casts of a particular bit that you were in love with because I can throw everything else back into the melt pot. I don’t mind making a new mold if somebody loves slotta tabs because a blank is less than $15.

In terms of challenges, well, mold-making is the biggest challenge. A drunk monkey can run a spin caster, but making a mold takes a little more finesse. But honestly, the biggest challenge for us has been the same manufacturing bottlenecks everyone else is dealing with. We are using 3D printed models, and we don’t do that in house (yet?) which means we have to sit and wait in line.

And a mistake can cost us weeks if we need to wait for a new print.

Other than that, spin casting takes up more space than resin casting, I think. Even a New Venture Casting Factory takes up a not insignificant footprint, and you have to be pretty hands-on to do spin casting. It has a similar type of grimy, elbow grease type of feel to it as working on a car.

You are moving heavy pieces of metal, prying things open with a screwdriver, cutting vulcanized rubber, working with molten metal, hammering shit, bending shit, and running machinery. If that’s something you like, it’s not hard, but it’s much less…clinical…than resin casting, which is more soft things and clean spaces and precise measurements and dainty work.

MWG: Well first of all it isn’t a skirmish wargame! Not in the way you normally think of one.

Exiles isn’t a two-player, PVP, your group of dudes vs my group of dudes experience. But if you are into skirmish war-games you’ll feel right at home in Exiles. The game has the same flexible, fast-play, narrative feel that you love about skirmish wargames.

 Exiles is what we call Miniatures Action Role Playing. It’s an intensely cooperative game where you control a single character and work closely with your buddies to kick the shit out of a bunch of dudes controlled by a GM.

 What makes Exiles unique is that it has an incredibly fast, frenetic play style that I thought was an insane idea when we first dreamed it up!

 Games last about 45 minutes, and you normally cram in more than 15 game turns, which IS insane. We’re talking 90 second game turns, even with 5 or more people playing at once. Talk about being constantly engaged in the game!

 We accomplish this with a simultaneous play mechanic in which everybody does their shit at the same time. Add to this the fact that the game is designed to play in a 3×3 area or SMALLER and a picture of the gameplay starts to emerge.

 You’ve got a quick-moving, intensely cooperative game in a small space with people playing and talking and planning and moving models and rolling dice all at the same time.

 Even if you are a purist wargamer, Exiles provides a uniquely intense tactical challenge. You don’t get to dither over details or spend minutes orchestrating actions. You’ve got to PLAY, and you’ve got to make sure your buddy has your back, and you’ve got to somehow achieve the objective without it all descending into a clusterfuck that leaves you bleeding’ out in a ditch.

MWG: Of course there isn’t ANYTHING in the webstore. But it IS full of NOTHING. You guys aren’t ‘Nosy Fuckers’ are you?

 Products…yea…it would be a great idea to sell something.

 The online retail release will be the week AFTER Gen Con, this August, with a formal retail release at our Gen Con booth. We have a booth, by the way.

 However, we will be selling some special edition pre-release products before Gen Con, likely starting at the end of March. And if I can weasel out of work I might squirm up to Adepticon with a suitcase full of weird shit.

 We will ALSO be releasing some just-for-fun type of products in the interim, most notably (and soonest) our Sack of Shit product, which is a lovingly crafted sack filled with scale model shits for your game table. We’ve got bear shit and horse shit and bull shit and, well, you’ll see soon.

 The first Sacks of Shit were generously donated to the participants of the Highlander charity tournament, which was able to raise nearly 2K of cash and a car full of donations! Pretty soon we will be putting the Sack of Shit into production for regular retail release. And we better, because I spent a week making five shitty production molds!

WC:  When will a rules PDF be released for playtesting?

 MWG: Good question. We are play testing right now, but not in an open play test sort of way. The rules will be released for free download when the products are released, and we have plans to release a Beta version before then, maybe fairly soon!

WC:  Can we expect to see some Demonstration Videos showcasing your product and gameplay?

MWG: Yea, absolutely, now that my new computer has arrived. I discovered that a Macbook Pro is not terribly good at rendering videos. Things you learn.

 The good news is that our friend Sideshow Matt is organizing a play test group composed of some of the loveliest ladies of the NOLA burlesque scene, so we should have some pretty darn SEXY gameplay videos in the future!

WC:  Since you clearly don’t plan to use Kickstarter to help with your initial product launch, how will you be launching your first run of Exile product and when can we expect to see it? 

MWG:  We are launching it with lots of hard work and lots of our own money!

 We have most of our production materials already, but the products are still in development. We have plenty enough done NOW that we could launch a crowdfunding campaign, but we would rather sell people finished products that we know meet our standards for quality.

 Our first products will be available at our Gen Con booth, and after that via our webstore. Prior to Gen Con we will be releasing some impossibly cool, if a little janky, special edition pre-release Persona Pack products for the most dedicated, die-hard Exiles fans and supporters to enjoy.

 They will be ten flavors of awesome, and we are extremely excited about getting our first one up for sale. We anticipate the first one to be available towards the end of March.

WC:  What plans for expansions for you have for the Exiles system?

MWG: The great thing about Exiles is that it has a veritably bottomless pit of content. Our principle expansions will be new Persona Packs featuring the Tier Persona system, and there’s so much to explore there, from the super hillbilly Wilburns to the man-eating Wendigo to the disease-riddled Buzzard!

 We will also be releasing new Campaigns featuring new factions of bad guys, as well as expansions for those campaigns.

 As far as the RATE of releases is concerned, that depends largely on how well we do with our initial products. All proceeds are going to be sunk right back into making new Exiles products, so as long as we are bringing in enough revenue to keep the lights on and our artists working, we will be releasing new products.

WC:  Do you have other games planned for down the road? Fantasy, Sci Fi, Steampunk, etc?

 MWG: Absolutely! Jesse is full of games. We have several projects sitting around in the backs of our minds for the future, but right now we are intensely concentrated on bringing our first Exiles products to life. There’s enough to do on that front to keep us very busy indeed.

 As I am fond of saying, “One step at a time.”

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