On this edition of Spotlight we’re talking to Isaac Vega, designer of such gaming icons as Dead of Winter and Ashes: Rise of the Phoenixborn. We talk about his design process, what genres he’d like to work in, what he’s excited about, and whether he’ll ever return to cyberpunk. Onward!

This interview was lightly edited for clarity.

Why don't we start with you telling everyone very briefly who you are.

My name is Isaac Vega, I am the VP of research and design at Plaid Hat Games, I've been working with them full time for a little over four years now. And I have done many different positions while I've been a part of Plaid Hat Games, but mostly what I take care of is working on new projects, overseeing the projects that we are working on, and making sure that everything including the art and just the design is up to the absolute best of what we can possibly do. Meaning within what Plaid Hat is trying to aim for in its brand.

What is Plaid Hat trying to aim for?

We are a very storytelling centric company, we try to bring out games that are, you know, being very good at giving a representation to many different times of people.

Yeah, totally, totally down with that.

We're trying to put out games that offer something new to the industry, that offer maybe a different twist on certain mechanics that people haven't seen before - but most importantly what we want to do is provide something that gives the industry something that is going to create a lot of fun and happiness around the table with you and your friends and we are always aiming and striving for new ways in which we can accomplish that goal.

You said you were full time four years ago, right?

Yes.

Okay, so can you give us a timeline for that, like around which game was that?

That was when I was just finalizing up designs on Dead of Winter, believe it or not.

Wow, four years, really?

Yeah, it's been much longer it feels (laughs), but yeah that's when things were getting finalized. Colby had gotten the company to a point where things were pretty stable - he had been full time for a year himself and thought it was time to bring me on full time, which is very awesome. We were just working out of his house at that time, but we made it work and we've been able to add on people ever since and build the company into something awesome. Since then we got bought out - twice! (laugh)

So one of those was Asmodee, and the other one was?

F2Z purchased us before.

Oh yeah, that's right, and then Asmodee acquired them.

Yes.

So, during City of Remnants and Bioshock Infinite you were freelancing?

City of Remnants

Correct. I had gotten to know Colby through my mom, who went to the same church as him. He was, at that point, had already released Summoner Wars and was working on releasing Dungeon Run and getting to the point where he was close to releasing Mice & Mystics. We met, and I was able to show him another design that I learned later that he wasn't too fond of! But he was very nice to me and encouraged me to continue and then I had the opportunity to sit down with him and pitch to him an idea for another game, and that's what turned into City of Remnants. Since then, I have taken every opportunity that was possible to volunteer for the company, help the company grow in any way that's possible and then we had the opportunity of Bioshock come along-

Which was huge, right?

It was huge! It was absolutely huge for us. When I saw that opportunity I was like - I have to be a part of this. So we worked on lots of different designs for that project and luckily enough my design is what ended up pulling through. So at that point it was pretty solidified that this is what I wanted to do and I wanted to focus a lot of my time on making sure that this was a career I could get into and I took an entire work of working to focus on designing board games and out of that came Dead of Winter and Ashes - and those games I believe are what ended up getting me to my full time position at the company as well as my work and volunteering at different conventions and making sure I was there for Colby in every situation that I could be.

So hang on, so you're telling me that Ashes had been in planning since like, 2013?

Yeah!

Oh my god. Cause, I don't know if you've seen this, but I interviewed Fernanda...

Oh! No no no, I haven't, that's awesome.

But that was like, back in February - but I interviewed her and I talked to her because - first of all - holy crap, right? That lady can draw.

She is fantastic.

So when I spoke to her about - at the time we were talking about Ashes, cause Ashes - start of 2017, was still sort of like roaring along - and I asked her how did you get into Ashes and she was like 'Oh, it's because I did all the art for Dead of Winter and Isaac was like, "Hey, why don't you do this other game we're doing?"' So can we talk about like, how that came to be?

I found Fernanda's work online and saw that she, man, she has the perfect tone for Dead of Winter.

That dark, brooding kind of...

Yes. And her art lended so well for what I was hoping to go for for Dead of Winter. So reached out to her and luckily enough she was willing to work on the project and did a phenomenal job - and I believe part of the reason Dead of Winter's success, how it's gotten to where it is is because of her work on that project. When we had the opportunity to do a new project and try to again excel on the visual standpoint, no one else more than Fernanda was working for that project.

Originally I had her try some different styles out and they weren't really lending to what her strengths were and once I noticed that I had her switch back to kind of a perfect match of what we were hoping for with the bright and colorful popping kind of vibrance but also with what she does best which is this amazing almost realistic but quite not there - just beautiful characters, you know?

Kind of like, dark urban fantasyish kinda.

Yeah. She was able to really bring out something unique in the style of Ashes with the backgrounds of whites and having all of that color pop - it was just a beautiful combination and once we saw the first piece, which ended up being, believe it or not, Brennan, which was an expansion to Ashes.

Which was he again?

He was the...

The fire mage guy, right?

He was... trying to think of the name... Clouds of Blackfire? I know that's wrong. (laughs)

No, it's Brennan Blackcloud. I'm just reading it right here.

Yeah, in this entire story developed behind Brennan what Fernanda did - because Brennan is secretly a girl - and all of this backstory developed based on the fact that Fernanda's art really helped lend to that. Working with Fernanda has been a dream. There's nobody else I have developed really that kind of relationship with as far as artists, as she is just been able to excel on every level. Our expectations and keeps improving all the time.

Would you definitely be bringing her on for other stuff in the future, yeah?

Yeah, anything that she would be open to we would love to have her back. Obviously she is still a freelancer so she's always available to do what she needs to do. She just started her own Patreon, so I highly suggest anybody that's interested in her work to go check that out.

That's great, I didn't know about the Patreon so I'll link to that in the interview.

Yeah! Definitely. Anybody who's interested, yeah, go ahead and check out her work.

She just did Century: Spice Road as well and she knocked that out of the park.

Yeah! Century was actually something that she did and did a fantastic job on.

So since we're talking about her stuff, I wanna ask you about Dead of Winter, like - do you have any further plans for that, cause you're still releasing expansions. Warring Colonies has been announced - that's in the works, that's coming soon.

Dead of Winter is a very successful IP for us. I don't have anything that I can talk about right now that we are working on, but it's always something that's gonna be important to Plaid Hat and definitely with the Crossroad games branding we are going to definitely be working towards releasing other Crossroad games in the future.

Great! That was my next question.

(Laughs)

Please

Is there anything you can tell us about future Crossroads games? I understand if the answer is 'No.'

I can't say anything about those things right now, but just stay tuned to our website, stay tuned to what we're going to be doing over the next coming years and I'm sure you won't be disappointed.

Yeah alright, cool. Just, you know, give me cyberpunk Crossroads. Just... please.

(Laughs)

You already did cyberpunk! You did City of Remnants. You know what it's like, you know how cool it is! Come back!

(Laughing)

We're always exploring different themes and things that we're interested in here at the office and we love doing things like that and I can't wait to start showing off the world - the things that we've been working on behind the scenes.

Yeah, I'm sure all of us are like 'Dying to know!'

(Laughs)

Speaking of which, Raxxon!

I guess you've been busy with Raxxon, cause like, it's appeared out of nowhere.

Well, actually I only played the game pretty much and helped with the art direction of course - Fernanda's work as well. It actually was done by one of our other employees here, Joe Ellis, who's mostly known for our website and helping with playtesting here at the office - but he knocked it out of the park with this campaign and he's just a fantastic, fantastic person and we're seeing a lot of cool stuff as a result of that.

What is your plan for Raxxon actually? Because currently all that I know about the game apart from that it's kind of like a light co-op game with an infection kind of theme is the marketing push. I've been seeing a lot of like really cryptic updates from my friends on Twitter.

Oh, you'll have to ask the Raxxon officials. (laughs) Cause I'm not allowed to speak on it. I've probably said already too much.

Yeah so you're definitely not allowed? Definitely? Definitely? Not allowed?

Nope. No comment any further.

Okay. Alright.

(laughing) I didn't say anything, I swear, alright? Leave me alone. (laughing)

Well, alright. I won't push you on that.

Ashes is still releasing stuff - Song of Soaksend, Laws of Lions - they're both coming out soon.

Yes.

Are you still heavily involved with the development of these expansions?

Yes, yes. There are some new expansions that are coming out later that were designed by my lead developer Robert Klotz and he has done a fantastic job. But I have still stayed very close to the moving forward of that project. It's something that I'm still very passionate about. I love Ashes and the two that you mentioned were designed by me. Man oh man, that game has turned into something just so beautiful and the fanbase around it is so passionate and I absolutely can't wait for them to see more things coming out for that project later this year.

Which leads nicely to my next question: What do you see is the future of Ashes? Because you see that that's going super well, the two new expansions that we're talking about are deluxe, with their own deckbox and new dice and stuff.

Yeah, I hope for the brand to continue. We've definitely had some hiccups with releases on certain times. I'm really hopeful that the brand can survive. There has been some, you know, growing pains, with any sort of multiple acquisition games, anything like that - but we have the backing of Asmodee and Plaid Hat backing full force and I'm really excited to see where the brand continues to go. I would love to see obviously more Phoenixborns and even further things in the lore that I have in my head come out, but those are things that I can't really be public about right now.

That's fine. Do you have any plans for like, to explore more games in the universes that already exist? I know you guys wanna release more Crossroads games, but what about the stuff that you've got, like, I think City of Remnants is an incredibly cool theme. You've got the Ashes universe, you've got Dead of Winter universe, you got the Mice & Mystics universe which you guys expanded with Tail Feathers - so is it going to be more towards new IPs or expansion of stuff that you've already got to key off that brand recognition.

As we continue throughout the next coming years, you'll see a combination of both. Obviously Raxxon was in the Dead of Winter world and so is Spectre Ops - you see little traces of Raxxon in there as well, so there are things that we're happy to - we like to play around with our IPs that are popular and we also like to develop new IPs so it's always going to be for us wherever our hearts take us, wherever our passion takes us here in the office and whatever we'd like to see out there in the community and what we think will also do best and what's fresh not only for us but for the community as well.

Is there a theme or IP that you burningly want to work on like: this is my dream. Anything. At this point it's like, pie in the sky kind of-

(pained noise) I'm not sure about an IP, but if you were to ask me a few years ago it would have been Final Fantasy.

Ahhh.

Because I love, I love Square Enix and I was always a big fan of Final Fantasy when I was younger I even had like little Final Fantasy figurines right here on my desk. You know? That's just, you know, that's always been an IP that I've been very happy with and critical of (laughs) throughout the years.

Yeeess.

But as far as like a certain theme that I feel that I would like to explore one day? Um... You know cowboys is something that's cool but I haven't really thought of anything that I can think of for that setting and hopefully one day lightning will strike (laughing) and something will come up. But it's always been something that I've been very interested in and one of my favorite games is Red Dead Redemption, which I just thought was beautifully done and would love to see more of that game coming out.

Are you a wild west purist? Do you like weird west with the supernatural and science fiction-

I love, I love supernatural. Like, I am definitely not a purist when it comes to any of that. I like things being weird and crazy and interesting and going further. Not that the purist stuff can't be cool too, but I love when the fantastical comes into that because when you're a storyteller that's one of the things that, you know, that's so cool that we can see outside of our own world. We can expand out into things that could never happen in reality and the opportunity to do that is just too tempting for me to ignore (laughs).

I mean, you know, you could do a gunslinger Phoenixborn, right? Or does that not fit in that world? That's a bit too-

Guns... Guns don't exist in Ashes. That's something I've stayed away from.

Okay. No guns. Got it.

Doomtown mixed magic and western to great acclaim.

Let's talk a little about your design process. How does it work? Like: Oh I have a theme or a mechanic that I'm trying to chase - or do you have just like a giant folder of backlogged ideas that you just reach into - or do you maybe play a game or read something or watch something and go 'Oh my god, I need to do that!'

I try to play as many new games as possible. In the last year, year and a half or so it's been harder and harder to do so. But as soon as I do see something that's really interesting or something that I feel like 'Oh man that could have been really well done, if they would have done this...' That always sparks the designer in me.

But it doesn't really come to fruition until I really have a story or a theme around it. I kind of need to feel like there's people here, there's characters, there's a world that's going on before I can start throwing mechanics together and make something that's mechanically interesting. Because I really want people to feel like, hey, what I'm doing makes sense. What I'm trying to accomplish makes sense in this world and what are my goals are makes sense to the people I'm trying to represent. And it's something to me and that's really where I find the most inspiration from - What story am I trying to tell with the actions that these people are implementing?

Once you have that - the narrative throughline that you're trying to push - what's the next step for you?

Next step is for me to get to a point where - I've been doing a little bit more lately - outlines? Of the overall process. I used to just build prototypes. Hold the entire outline in my head and just build the prototype. But I've found that there's certain times that I forget little pieces of information?

Ohhh yeah.

When I'm building that, and outlines are helpful. I'm certainly not a person that writes rulebooks beforehand - I've never been that detail-oriented. I'm not a very good writer - with grammar or spelling. Colby's actually the one who writes all of my rulebooks here at the office once everything's been figured out and he's played the game. But most of the time I start with a little bit of outlines and then I get to building the prototype as quickly as possible. I need to see it in physical form in order for it to - to see if it works. To see if there's anything there that I'm missing or is wrong, or is just bloated or just isn't fun There's never been a first type prototype that's just perfect.

I don't think that's ever been the case in the history of like, the entire universe.

It's just a constant, constant scrapping and rebuilding of this type of - Of games that I've done, I still have games on my shelf right here that are just in that form that hasn't been pushed forward and I've moved onto something else, you know?

Yeah.

Sometimes you have to get it into that form in order to see if it's a good idea or not. You know? But yeah, that's mostly my process. I just try to get things to prototype form as quickly as possible to see if they're even worth continuing

If you could design any kind of game - like I said to you 'Okay, you have a six month vacation but you gotta design a game.' What would you do? Like, right now.

Ooph. (pause.) Probably the same things I'm working on right now. (laughs)

Haaaah.

Like, I'm very lucky to work in a company that lets me follow my passion and follow the direction that I want to and have that kind of creative control. So I love coming into work everyday and working on the things that I'm passionate about, so I can't really say that if I had that vacation, I would be doing anything else other than what I'm trying to accomplish right now, so.

How I imagine the Plaid Hat Offices.

You're basically living the dream, is what you're telling me, right?

Yeah. It is a dream. It's a wonderful job to work at Plaid Hat Games and be able to create with - not only to be able to follow my passions and create awesome things, but to work with an amazing team of people who are also so inspiring and following their passions and able to help me get to my goals.

It's nice, right? Being in that creative bubble of people and it's just - everything is sort of so energetic and so pure and so full of joy all the time.

Yeah! It's absolutely fantastic. I could not dream of having a better time.

Okay so, kind of the opposite question: What have you had to say no to, recently? What have you been in love with and gone 'No, I'm sorry this is not working, I've gotta kill it.' Or can you not talk about that?

Recently I had a crisis on one of my games I thought was going in a wrong direction. I thought it was not necessarily living up to the theme I had hoped for. So what I decided to do was build an entire other game in the same world.

Oh, I see.

And once I compared both of them - I played both of them back to back in the office - I realized that though the original vision, the original thing that I was going for was the correct direction and the new version was just not- not there. It's not necessarily that it was bad but just wasn't there. And it's funny how, like for me sometimes I really have to build something and have it fail in order for me to really see. And Colby gets on me about this all the time. He has so much insight that sometimes I'm like 'Aw man no I'm gonna do this way' and he's like 'No, you should have done it this way' and he ends up being right.

But it's a good push and pull that we have and he is a good contrast to my way of working because we end up lending to each other's - we help each other out with our strengths and our weaknesses.

Would you be able to tell me what kinds of games are you getting to play now? Because hopefully you're not like, so crunched that you still get to play games, right?

Well tonight's one of our game nights, and I really really really wanna play Near & Far. (laughs)

Oh my god. Have you played it yet?

No, I haven't played it yet.

It's really good.

I am so excited to sit down. Jerry's been - Jerry, the designer of Mice & Mystics - has been gushing about it for weeks now and I'm finally gonna make time to play this evening, so I'm really excited about that.

I hope that goes well.

Yeah, yeah, I hope so too. There's a lotta things that that game I hear is doing very right and I want to experience it. One of the other games that people have been gushing about that I still haven't gotten the chance to play that I really want to is also sitting here in the office is Gloomhaven.

(pained noise of waiting for Kickstarter shipping to begin)

It's something that I really wanna get to the table as well. Something that I've been impressed about lately, or within the last few months has been Mechs and Minions. It's a game that is very simple but it's one of the few programming games that I actually really enjoy. I feel like programming games so often can make me feel very um, just chaotic (laughs) in this one, because of its co-operative nature and the way it does programming so simply is just something that I find very elegant and the production value is through the roof.

So yeah, there's stuff that I get to play every now and then that really does show me wow, these other people are out there really upping their game, so I need to up my game too. But I really need to start making more time again to play more games that I out there that are hot. There are lots of new things that came out over the last year that I haven't gotten the chance to touch yet.

Same!

But I am so excited to get there.

Yeah. I have Star Wars Rebellion sitting on my bedside dresser table that I borrowed from a friend. It's been there for four days. I know all the rules. It's KILLING ME.

(laughs) Yeah, I haven't played that either! And I really need to. But yeah, there's so much cool stuff out there and there's only so much time. And when you're a game designer - or at least in my experience - when you're a game designer sometimes the last thing you wanna do is look at another game (laughing)

Oh my god.

Because you've been doing nothing thinking about mechanics and process and you know, like before I was a game designer I didn't look at games in a dissective kind of way. Like 'oh they did this or they did this interestingly or they did this wrong' and once you are a game designer I can't help but look at things like that and it takes a few games in order for me to just sit back and have the pure joy of it all.

I know exactly what you're saying cause like for me; I can't read or watch anything now without analyzing it. It's... honestly ruined a lot of stuff. But at the same time it does save me a lot of time, it's like - Oh. I was really excited for this, but it's actually horrible. NEVER MIND! CLOSE! You know?

(Laughs)

Still never read past the birthday. Can’t get through the prose.

But I still love playing and every opportunity that I can I've tried to take inward to see where I can learn and see what joy I can get out of it as well.

I will say though I haven't played a bad board game in a very long time. Most of them have either been really good and I really like, or really good, but not my thing? You know, like maybe they're too euro, or they're too abstract, or they're too puzzly or whatever - but I play it and I'm like - I can respect this design. Like, I think this is really good. Like I played Through The Ages for the first time the other day, and I was like - this is WAY too heavy for me.

Yeah.

It is WAAAY too heavy for me. But I think it's genius. I think, you know, Vlaada's a mad god of how to tune things and...

(Laughing)

Last question: Do you think you'd ever go back to re-visit either of the following: cyberpunk, City of Remnants, dudes on a map.

Uh yeah, definitely. I think that you'll see me revisiting that kind of stuff very soon. (Laughing)

Oh, thanks Isaac, that would be great! But seriously - because City of Remnants is so hard to find now and I was like - cause when I found out about it, Shut Up & Sit Down as you remember did a really gushing review of the game and I was like - oh this sounds so awesome! It's like - cause at the time the only dudes on a map I had played was Chaos in the Old World, and it is now my favorite genre, period. So I was like: Oh a cyberpunk dudes on a map! I need this! I need this! But it was impossible to find. I only just found out one of my friends has a copy so I'll be trying my best to play that soon as I can.

But it's good to know that you have plans for revisiting either... or... all of those things - maybe I shouldn't have asked all three and forced you into.

(laughing) It makes the mystery more interesting. (laugh)

Yeah, I mean, sure... if you want my readers to like bang on my comments box and go 'WHY DIDN'T YOU PRESS HIM?! WHY AREN'T YOU PLAYING HARDBALL WITH THE DESIGNER'

(laughing)

And I'm like 'I don't know, cause I'm too nice!'

(laughing)

I knew I said that was the last question but I, I do want to ask you just one last thing before we wrap up and that's how do you feel about cyberpunk? Because cyberpunk is my favorite genre, of all time, period. Do you have any thoughts?

I can't wait 'til the people that made The Witcher are doing this really cyberpunk game that's going to be coming out-

OH MY GOD YES! YES!

And I cannot wait to try it out, so... it's definitely a theme that's super interesting and a lot of fun and I can't wait until it releases so, yeah. I'm a fan. (laughs)

What does cyberpunk say to you? What makes cyberpunk your jam?

I just think it's a fun view the possibilities of our future and how we can still be - there's so much hope in it and so much chaos that can just be representative how people view the good and the bad of what the future can bring and I think that's an interesting place for stories for him.

Yeah, I completely agree.

Artist Kirsten Zirngibl’s vision of a cyberpunk Uganda.

Thank you so much for your time, Isaac. How can people find you if they wanna find you on the Internet?

They can find me at IsaacsAshes on twitter and they can also email at isaac@plaidhatgames.com

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