Game Designer Interview: Lukas Litzsinger

There has been some debate about the best game of 2012, but the answer seems pretty clear by BoardGameGeek’s ratings. Android: Netrunner stands tall above the rest, and it seems like its popularity has no signs of slowing down. Although the game was originally created by Richard Garfield in the nineties, Lukas Litzsinger is the man responsible for developing Fantasy Flight’s new Living Card Game version of it. Thanks to Lukas for the great interview!

I’ve heard your initial backstory about getting into gaming and getting hired by FFG from other podcast interviews, but here’s a chance to tell us a bit more about yourself: other hobbies, current favorites, factoids, whatever else you’d like…

I’d describe myself as a gamer. Tabletop or digital, I’m always looking for new challenges and a competitive outlet. Tolkien’s term of “sub-creation” really resonates with me, and setting aside the larger ontological ramifications of the term, I think it perfectly captures the creative process. It is impossible to create in a vacuum, and there is no such thing as an original idea. I find a lot of enjoyment in exploring previously established concepts and finding ways to improve on them. Board and card games are a perfect outlet for this, as they are vastly easier to iterate than video games. As a teen I would love to foist house rules into board games, but eventually I took it too far and tried to implement one before even playing the game. The game was actually the first edition of Descent, and the heroes got slaughtered. While my friends and family were more wary of my house rules from then on, it did help me learn a valuable lesson: there is no substitute for playing the game!

Many of us out there think that working at a place like FFG is “the dream,” but we also thought that about things like playtesting video games, though we now know that that’s more like torture… What is a workday at FFG even like? How can you tell if it was a “successful” day?

Each workday is different, but I always look forward to coming in to work. There are few short-term markers of success, since we work on projects that are months in the making. A common misconception is that we are paid to play games. I spend very little time during work actually playing games, though we do a lot of playtesting after work in the evening.

I’ve seen some posts for LCG designers wanted currently for FFG – as a player of Magic for over 15 years, it does indeed sound like a dream job. What’s it take to do well at that kind of job?

I think you have to be driven and flexible. At FFG you take on a lot of responsibility, and you need to budget your time accordingly. Creativity is obviously a large part of the job, but attention to detail is, in my opinion, just as important.

How did Fantasy Flight first get the idea to pursue the Netrunner license? Why pick up a CCG that essentially failed? And how did you end up in charge of it?

I can’t speak to the licensing part of the story, but I think it is a testament to the game’s brilliance that over 15 years later it was seen as one of the holy grails of CCGs. I honestly can’t say exactly how I ended up in charge of it, other than I showed a lot of interest in the project when our manager, Michael Hurley, first put it in front of us. Time-wise, I was currently leading the Warhammer: Invasion and Lord of the Rings LCGs, but Nate French was deep into the Star Wars LCG, so eventually Michael stopped by my desk and officially assigned it to me. We ended up hiring another designer to start taking over Lord of the Rings a couple of months later, which allowed me to focus more on Netrunner as we started transitioning the development of Lord of the Rings.

What led to Netrunner being set in the Android universe? Will its success lead to more games set in that universe, like Infiltration?

The Android universe seemed like the perfect fit for Netrunner, since it had the near-future cyberpunk and noir atmosphere that has recently been underrepresented in gaming. We also wanted to create a unique aesthetic for the game that would set it apart from our other LCGs. The art uses cleaner lines and is more comic book in nature, and together with the stunning templates designed by Michael Silsby the game looks fantastic. It is certainly a contrast to the grunge of the original game, but I think it does an excellent job representing the pragmatic optimism of the Android universe. Netrunner also allowed us to expand on the Android universe, defining cyberspace and hacking at a detailed level. Working with your own intellectual property means that you can iterate concepts much faster, and you have a lot of freedom to pursue your vision of the game. It’s possible we could see more games set in the Android universe in the future.

Despite Netrunner’s unsuccessful past, Android: Netrunner has been a huge success, and it’s in the top FIVE games of all time now on BoardGameGeek. Have you been surprised by the sheer size of its success, or is this about what you and FFG expected?

Definitely surprised. I knew it was a good game, and I enjoyed playing it immensely, and so I focused on crafting the game that I would want to play. Sometimes having such an insular focus is dangerous, but since we were not changing any of the basic mechanics of the game, I think it was the right call. Both Dan Clark, who co-created the Android universe with Kevin Wilson, and Michael Hurley became my sounding boards for game tweaks. But I never imagined it would reach the top 5 on Board Game Geek. BGG is largely responsible for getting me deeper into the hobby, and so it is surreal to see my name associated with such a highly regarded game.

Having played Magic for many years, I see some patterns in a collectible game, like some intentionally “bad” cards for the sake of rarity or drafting. What were the challenges of adapting a “dead” CCG into the LCG model?

Netrunner was different than Magic, in that there were almost no cards that were straight-up better than others. That is not to say there were no bad cards, but rarity did not go hand in hand with power level. So in that sense, it was pretty easy to adapt Netrunner to an LCG model. More important were the balancing changes that needed to be made to the card pool. Implementing a limit of 3 copies of a card nerfed a lot of the non-interactive power decks of the old game, but I also wanted to make sure that fast advance and damage prevention were more difficult. In an LCG, every card has to pull its weight in a release, and we do not set out to make bad cards. Android: Netrunner has a very high percentage of competitive, playable cards.

Along the same lines, how has the metagame developed for tournament play, given the small card pool that basically everyone has? Do you think this in turn makes -playing- more important than deckbuilding, somewhat counterpoint to Magic? Any surprises yet?

The nature of the game itself makes playing it more important than deckbuilding. A player has to make a vast number of choices during the game, and that rewards player skill. Deckbuilding is still important, but there are diminishing returns when you spend too time tweaking your cost curve or influence without playing. I think it is difficult to define the current metagame, since so much of it changes from location to location. Strong players can warp a meta as well, due to the skill involved in the game.

There are a lot of collectible games and even a lot of LCGs under FFG’s banner – what makes the gameplay of Netrunner really stand out? What will make a player want to invest month after month in this versus Magic, or Yu-Gi-Oh!, or say the Star Wars LCG?

Garfield’s original design of the game was certainly ahead of its time, and it is quite mind-blowing. Melding a rich thematic experience with a tight action economy is unparalleled in card games. Add in the element of bluff and it is easy to see why it is an all-time classic. I remember it wasn’t until about the third time I played the game that I realized one of the reason it felt so different: I wasn’t turning any cards sideways!

How much did you interact with Richard Garfield, if at all?

Richard and I exchanged a few emails, but the responsibility to reboot the game was internal to FFG. That said, the base mechanics of the game are all Richard, and I’ve just tried to highlight those brilliant mechanics without screwing them up in the process. Magic: The Gathering has undoubtedly had the biggest impact on card games in the past two decades, so you can’t help but wonder how many games would have been spawned if Netrunner was originally more successful.

As someone who has a writing degree and aspired to be a writer, how do you take steps to “tell stories” with the cards and sets you design? Is that an important part of the process to you?

A parallel can certainly be drawn between each card and a short story. The mechanics, the title, the art, and the flavor text all combine to define part of the Android universe and the action of the game. The best cards are the ones that are able to tell that short story during the game. One of the biggest challenges is making sure that the art and text support each other. The title and flavor text are easier to change. There have been several situations where we get the art in for a card, and decide that it just doesn’t fit. Sometimes we are able to juggle in a different piece of art and retheme the card, other times we will rework the card from the ground up. I think you will see more world-building in the game as it moves forward, as that is one area that I would like to focus on more.

What are you currently reading/playing/watching/enjoying?

I’m currently reading through Under the Dome and The Brothers Karamazov. Most of my gaming time has been taken up with League of Legends, as I play that on a fairly consistent basis.

What’s next for Android: Netrunner?

We’re always looking for ways to improve the game. We recently changed the tournament rules, so we will be watching carefully to see how they turn out. We want each faction to be competitive at the tournament level, and think this is the first step to making various builds more viable. One of my design goals is to not pile on many new mechanics, but to rely on existing mechanics and come up with novel card effects. There are a lot of cards in the pipeline that I am really excited about.

Anything else you’d like to add?

Choosing and naming the factions of the game was one of the most challenging aspects of the design. Narrowing it down to four corporations was difficult, but not as difficult as naming the Runners. I remember walking around the FFG offices handing out surveys listing names of possible Runner factions; I found the list a couple of months after the game came out, and none of the 20 or so names on the list were actually used. The real breakthrough was when I realized that rather than focusing on Runners’ skills, like a traditional RPG would, we should focus on the Runners’ motivations.