Speaker 0 | 00:01.048
I just started recording, by the way, in case we miss anything really good, you know. I’m just, I’m recording right now. Everyone out there listening, you’re listening to Dissecting Popular IT Nerds. Keep going. So, go. Yeah. So, we’re talking with Jim. Am I pronouncing your last name right? Royston?
Speaker 1 | 00:18.392
Yes.
Speaker 0 | 00:19.332
Beautiful. I didn’t butcher that. Yep. Which is good. We’re doing a soft start today. This is, you know, trying to be as realistic here. So, okay. So, Dungeons and Dragons, that’s not stereotypical of IT guys.
Speaker 1 | 00:30.676
computer geeks at all uh well i don’t know quite a few of them that are but uh yeah no i’ve like i said i learned to improvise and it just makes it easier to i don’t know problem solve yeah
Speaker 0 | 00:45.989
yeah because yeah i mean it’s that’s all improvise you know improvisation is so you’re telling me then that it’s basically like dungeons and dragons then is what helped be a better problem solver yep which is which is great and it segues perfectly into the subject of today’s show. So everyone out there listening, we are speaking with Jim. And Jim is the, I mean, you have IT scripting specialist here. What would you say is like your main job on a day-to-day basis?
Speaker 1 | 01:16.387
I’d say my main job is gathering business requirements and then writing code or translating that into code for our operators to be able to ask the right questions. questions and get the right answers for our clients.
Speaker 0 | 01:29.213
Okay. So that’s nerdy enough that that qualifies. That’s great. So the point is, is I wouldn’t, a lot of times we don’t talk, we’re talking a lot about the, you know, work and culture inside of work and how do we work with other people and users and technology and all that stuff in the business world. But today I want to talk a little bit about what goes on outside of the business world. And I have to thank you because you’re like an avid gamer and gamer from. Really, it’s a board game. It’s board game. Board games,
Speaker 1 | 02:01.391
dice games, card games, role-playing games.
Speaker 0 | 02:06.154
Nowadays, when you say gamer, you think video games. You think Fortnite and numerous other things. But most people don’t know this. I ripped the television out of my house, I don’t know, two or three years ago because the kids just were like zombies. And it was… Life was easier back then, I’ll be honest. Life was easier to turn on the television and let your kids just kind of zone out. And now the house is a mess and there’s holes in the wall and people playing baseball in the house and all that other stuff. But I have learned that the family fun night has now become much coveted. And I’m looking for other board games and you gave me some outstanding suggestions, by the way. And so I’m just going to let you speak from there. So you tell me a little bit about what you do.
Speaker 1 | 02:55.808
your spare time so I actually helped run a club a gaming club in the Tampa Bay area and that’s all we do is play games we teach people how to like like you were going on so you know we problem-solve we teach people how to build maybe an economic engine or you know how to basically manage money it’s not monopoly there are monopolies an old-school game There are many, many other games that…
Speaker 0 | 03:27.486
We’re playing the boardroom game. I remember I downloaded an NES emulator not too long ago just to play Contra and kind of go back and talk about it. And so I got all these games in Japanese as well. And I had no idea what they were. But I just remember one game was just a bunch of guys sitting around a boardroom table and you had to make decisions. And I’m pressing A and B and guys are saying different things. in Japanese, like in this game. And that was all the game was,
Speaker 1 | 03:56.049
but yeah,
Speaker 0 | 03:57.069
it sounds, sounds similar, but go ahead. Managing money, like real, real, real money, not, not paper or monopoly money, but a little bit more than just pay your taxes when you go past, when you land on it. Luxury.
Speaker 1 | 04:08.574
Yeah. Well, and it’s like building a corporation up. There’s a game out there. There’s a series of games out there called 18 XX, and they’re all about building the railroads that you, that, you know, from the old West. So you’ve got to build these transportation lines and you have to build it better than the guy next to you or he’s going to get all the good contracts. And of course, the better contracts you get, the better, you know, stock you’re going to have for your company.
Speaker 0 | 04:38.332
This is part of the game?
Speaker 1 | 04:39.652
That’s part of the game.
Speaker 0 | 04:40.672
Did we get to enslave people into, you know, working and paying them with like the, you know, the company money? I can’t remember what that was. What did we learn about in high school back then when we paid?
Speaker 1 | 04:50.435
Oh, company bonds.
Speaker 0 | 04:53.301
You would get paid by working on the railroad, but they would pay you in like the company dollars that could only be spent at like the company store. So you could really never leave.
Speaker 1 | 05:00.969
Yep.
Speaker 0 | 05:02.362
Keep going. This is great. And this is going already. We’ve tried to leave the workplace, but it’s already coming back to the workplace immediately. I’m already seeing many ways that we could do team building with board games at work.
Speaker 1 | 05:15.251
Oh, absolutely. One of my favorite games, whether it’s we’ve done this at work and a lot after hours, I get teams that come into our club that want to do team building exercise. And we use games like Flashpoint. which you are all members of a firefighting team, not trying to put the fire out. You’re trying to control it enough so that you can save the people that are in the building.
Speaker 0 | 05:39.048
And what’s the name of that type of game again?
Speaker 1 | 05:41.290
It’s a cooperative board game. So remember Monopoly?
Speaker 0 | 05:45.613
Yeah.
Speaker 1 | 05:46.353
Yeah. So in Monopoly, you are playing against everybody else. And at the end of the game, one person comes out ahead. They’re, you know, Mr. Bucks, Mr. Money Bucks, whatever you want to call him. They’re the winner. because they have the most points or the most money or whatever. In cooperative board games, every person has a special skill. So in Flashpoint, for example, you might be the medic, or you might be the thermal imager, and you’re the only one that could see further in the smoke-filled rooms as a thermal imager than anybody else on the board. And that makes you able to move faster, and so you could do things that… but other people can’t, but you all have to work together to save, depending on how many people are playing, you know, eight to 10 to 15 people out of this burning building.
Speaker 0 | 06:37.325
See,
Speaker 1 | 06:37.445
this is perfect pets, by the way,
Speaker 0 | 06:39.446
this is perfect for all my kids. Like if they’re bickering and getting, you know, getting upset, sorry, we have to play games now. And you have to,
Speaker 1 | 06:45.711
absolutely. But it teaches you to work together. Pandemic is another one. And pandemic’s been around for a long time. And you, in pandemic, you take. the role of somebody in the World Health Organization, and you’re trying to prevent outbreaks of four different diseases. You’re trying to find cures for it. But again, you might be the transportation expert, which can move people from one city to another, even if the airport’s closed. Or you might be the researcher who can walk into a city and cure like two or three of the diseases, not cure them, but, you know. Take the cubes off. Lessen the threat, you know. Treat, I guess, would be a good word.
Speaker 0 | 07:31.630
Gotcha. And by the way, I did buy that game at Target this weekend.
Speaker 1 | 07:35.313
Did you?
Speaker 0 | 07:35.853
Yeah. And I’m still reading the directions on how to set up a board. They need like a go to this YouTube channel for a quick start, which I’m sure I can Google it.
Speaker 1 | 07:45.179
I was going to say, they actually have learn to plays and quick starts for most games anymore.
Speaker 0 | 07:51.003
Yep. Keep going. Like you couldn’t like just open Catan. and start playing without, you know, really reading kind of like, okay, now I get it. Now we got to play.
Speaker 1 | 07:59.259
Exactly.
Speaker 0 | 07:59.979
Exactly. For anyone out there listening to that has never played Catan, you know, most people are probably pretty nerdy listening to this show that know exactly what it is. But when I, the way I got Catan was I was walking through the game aisle of Walmart and some guy said to me, Catan is the best game ever in the history. I was like, well, I guess I know what game I’m getting.
Speaker 1 | 08:22.985
Yep.
Speaker 0 | 08:23.585
Anyways.
Speaker 1 | 08:24.710
uh keep going well i’ve been that guy i’ve actually been in like target walmart and somebody’s just staring blankly at all these games because in the old days you can get like monopoly and trouble and sorry and scrabble those were it i mean you didn’t have a whole lot you had some games for the younger kids like mousetrap and stuff but the the core games i mean that’s that there wasn’t a whole lot of selection nowadays
Speaker 0 | 08:52.674
you know you can walk into target and there’s 300 games on the shelf i can see you there because there were some like three girls there waiting to uh try and purchase a game kind of arguing over what they were doing and i can totally see you in that aisle going girls here’s what you want to do what do you like to do you’re like you’re like the consultant the gaming consultant do you work here no i know you should well i i do actually do some consulting i work the club you
Speaker 1 | 09:21.726
Grand Arena is the club I’m talking about, and that’s all we do is play games. And if somebody comes in and says, you know, I like remember the old telephone game where you’d start with one phrase or word or whatever, and you’d tell the next person and tell the next person, and it changes by the end?
Speaker 0 | 09:39.198
Absolutely.
Speaker 1 | 09:39.498
Telestrations. Telestrations is just like that. It’s win, lose, or draw, but it’s telephone or grapevine or whatever you want to call it. you start out with one word and the next person has to draw it. Then you flip the page and the next person has to look at the picture and figure out what that word is. And then write the word down. And then the next person has to look at that word and draw it. So it keeps changing on and on. And we’ve gone from, oh, I don’t know, you know, cheeseburger to man in the moon.
Speaker 0 | 10:14.037
It’s so crazy.
Speaker 1 | 10:14.678
Because people just can’t, yeah, some people can’t draw. Awesome. But it’s a fun game.
Speaker 0 | 10:21.842
Okay, so we got Pandemic. For everyone listening out there, games that you must order now on Amazon or go to Target. Do not call Target and get stuck in their auto attendant that leads you to absolutely nowhere, where someone then puts you on hold, only to leave you to hang up, which is… Yeah. Anyways, you know, being a telecom guy, I find that to be quite ridiculous. And they could probably do some really cool things in the store with some omni-channel stuff.
Speaker 1 | 10:48.422
Oh, absolutely.
Speaker 0 | 10:49.143
You know, and chat with some people and, you know, actually answer the phone with enthusiasm. The other really surprising thing that shocked me about… target was they had no messaging on hold a blank beep you know it’s a cisco call manager they probably have some you know team of 50 people managing it because it’s so simple and um you know they don’t have engaging on hold messaging like no it’s just amazing to me like that would increase someone waiting on hold and maybe be excited to buy something uh
Speaker 1 | 11:21.680
anyhow especially if they’re hey the latest game in or the latest
Speaker 0 | 11:25.382
video or the latest tv or we got special on aisle four or whatever yeah we were just featured on uh dissecting popular it nerds and did you know that pandemic there’s only four boxes left yep anyways um uh so keep going so we got pandemic we got flashpoint what are the so i like the idea of this um cooperative game so right so there’s another one out there you might have a bad apple on your team and we’re gonna get together and play this game and then we fail, what happens? It’s win or lose, right? So what happens if you lose? Everyone dies.
Speaker 1 | 11:59.800
Everybody wins or everybody loses. I mean, it’s, it’s, we get into the, you know, you get this participation trophy. Well, that’s not it. You know, when you’re in a cooperative game, everybody’s trying to win. For example, you’re trying to, to cure all the diseases that you can in pandemic and forbidden, forbidden desert, you’ve crashed in the desert and you have to work together. in order to find all the pieces of your craft, your aircraft, and fly back out before you get buried in the sand because Forbidden Desert’s got a big sandstorm blowing around.
Speaker 0 | 12:37.157
Awesome. Forbidden Desert. I’m writing these down so I can put them when we release this. Everyone listen. The games will be in the bullet points of the podcast.
Speaker 1 | 12:45.802
Yeah. Forbidden Island is also, it’s on the same theme. The island is actually sinking and you have to… discover certain things before the island sinks gotcha um and like i said that’s there’s other cooperative board games out there there’s they’re called castle uh save the castle so there’s like castle panic where these monsters are coming in from the forest and and trying to tear down the walls of the castle and you have to save the castle and that’s semi-cooperative there is a a competitive piece to it but you still have to work together you
Speaker 0 | 13:21.206
So what do you think about this? Are board games making a comeback? I’ve heard that they are. I don’t really know if it’s true statistically or what’s the deal?
Speaker 1 | 13:30.392
Board games are now an $8 billion business and it does not include Kickstarter.
Speaker 0 | 13:37.437
What do you mean Kickstarter?
Speaker 1 | 13:39.959
So there’s a lot of independent gamers out there, independent game designers that say, hey, I’ve got this idea for a game. And they put together the board. They put together the cards or the dice or whatever it takes to build that game in the theme that they’re using. And then if they’re independent, they can put it up on Kickstarter. Businesses are putting stuff on Kickstarter now, too. It’s almost like a preorder. But an independent designer is going to put it out there and see, well, do I have enough interest? And they’re going to put a goal out there.
Speaker 0 | 14:13.420
Oh, I see. Now I know what you’re talking about.
Speaker 1 | 14:14.760
It’s $20,000 to produce this game.
Speaker 0 | 14:17.521
Right.
Speaker 1 | 14:18.641
Well. If they do their math right, $20,000 will produce maybe 1,000 copies of the game. And that’s not included in that $8 billion of board game revenue. Board gaming has really taken off.
Speaker 0 | 14:34.688
Do you know anyone that’s made a board game and successfully made money off of it?
Speaker 1 | 14:38.790
I actually know quite a few people.
Speaker 0 | 14:40.770
Really?
Speaker 1 | 14:41.791
Yep.
Speaker 0 | 14:43.732
How much money are we talking about?
Speaker 1 | 14:45.912
Well, let’s see. Steve Jackson Games is a millionaire. Steve Jackson, yeah, he’s done quite well for himself. Monty Cook is a millionaire. Now, he’s done role-playing games.
Speaker 0 | 14:59.884
as far as board games go um because it’s got to be easier than designing it’s easier than designing a video game yeah i mean you’re not coding you’re not coding you don’t need like you know software developers you don’t need you know like that takes a lot you know i mean it does at least a board game like you can certainly mechanics there
Speaker 1 | 15:21.693
are you know 30 40 different mechanics you can put in a game so besides the card management hand management
Speaker 0 | 15:28.636
economics you know work engine worker placement there’s all kinds of mechanics that you could have i’ll stick with kids games i’ll do a monopoly i mean i’ll do a like a vandy land i’ll do candy land candy land actually has hand management by the way all right so talk to me about this is actually pretty cool so like where where could someone learn about this stuff and what are all these different like aspects and points that you’re talking about because you’re talking about something that’s like just uh you know it’s hieroglyphics to me
Speaker 1 | 15:57.952
Oh, absolutely. There’s a,
Speaker 0 | 15:59.713
there’s a website out there. Here’s how we’re going to do this. I’m the executive management person and you’re the it director trying to sell me on how to make a game.
Speaker 1 | 16:11.501
Well, I’m not a game designer, but no,
Speaker 0 | 16:15.123
you’re not. You’re just, you’re the it director. You’re not, you just need the thing that we’re buying. You know what I mean? You’re not the designer. Exactly. You’re just selling concepts. Anyways, go ahead.
Speaker 1 | 16:25.790
Well, if I was trying to sell you a game, like I, you know i would look at the team building games if being an it director i’d say hey we need to we need to build our teams up we need to build communications up and camaraderie and get people to work together and this is a way to do it a cooperative board game gets people to talk to each other across the table that maybe they don’t talk to each other every day oh wow yeah blowing my mind so i mean you Some of these can be done remotely. I mean, I think Pandemic actually has an app you could do. Yep. I actually like it across the board. So I like to be across the table from somebody. Face to face. Face to face. See their expressions. Be able to sit down and say, hey, I need, you know, I need to research yellow and I don’t have any yellow in my hand. And yellow in Pandemic is one of the diseases. It’s like yellow fever. And so I need to research that. And I don’t have any yellow in my hand at all. Uh-huh. However, I have the ability to trade with someone else, period, without them being in the same city, without all the rules in place. My special ability is I can trade. And I know you’ve got a bunch of yellow. So why don’t I give you a couple of blues or reds and you give me the yellows and we can cure this yellow disease. And the person that’s sitting across the table that’s got that, she’s the HR person. And she doesn’t get along with a whole lot of people. however when you make the points that you make you know again you’ve got to talk to people when you make those points you she could see the value of it and who knows maybe at the end you’ve made a friend yeah oh it’s great team building absolutely in games yep
Speaker 0 | 18:12.597
um so the club what goes on at the club like how do we how does this club work um why’d you start the club what kind of you know what happens there so the club is a family entertainment center
Speaker 1 | 18:24.728
We have over 300 games in our library. The reason we started was while the game industry is going really strong, there wasn’t a whole lot of places to play. You could go to a comic book store or you can go to a, they do have game stores that you can go to, but the game stores. Yeah. Well, the game stores deal in like magic, the gathering, because that’s a huge, huge moneymaker for them. Or they might deal in Warhammer, which is a huge moneymaker for them. But the board gamers. aren’t as big as the industry is they could make more money off of the the the magic people than they could off of a board gamer the board gamers are going to have four or five of them come in and they might no place to play because they can sell them on amazon or whatever exactly and you want to go somewhere and have a club and play with people and that just doesn’t exist yeah and so we created it we created the club here in tampa uh it it is a private club you have to be a member to come in One of the reasons we like that is on like on Friday nights, we see high school kids coming in. Parents are dropping their kids off to play at the club because it’s secure. It’s a safe place. There’s only one way in and out. You know, you have to be a member to come in.
Speaker 0 | 19:38.681
You have to pass numerous drug tests and hey, we’ll drop off your kid.
Speaker 1 | 19:46.587
We actually do have a, you know, it’s a family friendly environment. No drugs, alcohol, tobacco. you know gambling yeah in our in the club oh it’s awesome sounds amazing yeah we also have the gem in our club actually is not a board game, though. It is a cooperative game. It’s called Artemis. It’s a Starship bridge simulator. It is five computers networked together. Each one is a different station, like helm, science, weapons, communications, and engineering. And then the sixth chair is actually the captain’s chair. And you all have to work together to save the universe.
Speaker 0 | 20:24.493
Dude, this is the nerdiest thing I’ve ever heard. Awesome.
Speaker 1 | 20:28.926
It is absolutely nerdy. Yep.
Speaker 0 | 20:32.527
Okay. So what happens? Wait a second. So Captain, that’s so awesome.
Speaker 1 | 20:39.950
Yeah.
Speaker 0 | 20:40.270
So how do you roll this one out?
Speaker 1 | 20:44.772
It’s a simulator. You sit down in a chair in front of a computer console and the computer console’s touchscreen. So if you’re trying to raise shields, you touch the shields button. If you’re trying to, you know, target, you know. an enemy. You’re on weapons, you target the enemy, you load your torpedoes, you do whatever you need to do on the weapon station. If you’re on the weapon station, you can’t steer the ship. That’s Helm. So Helm needs to steer the ship. Science needs to tell him where to go because he’s got the whole star map and knows who’s the enemies and who’s the friendlies. Communications tells you who’s under attack or who needs this delivered where. And engineering is the IT guy. Anytime something goes wrong in the ship, engineering has to go fix it.
Speaker 0 | 21:32.786
This is awesome. How long does it go on for?
Speaker 1 | 21:36.529
Simulation can last about two hours. And once inside, when the door’s closed, it’s like the escape rooms. If you’ve ever done an escape room where it’s totally immersive and you’re in the submarine or you’re in the whatever, you’re on the bridge of a starship. And it’s awesome.
Speaker 0 | 21:53.964
That’s pretty sweet. So only five people, though.
Speaker 1 | 21:57.658
Six people, although I have done it with seven. I usually will do it like if we have seven people, one’s the XO. And I actually have a Game Master screen that I could say, okay, helm goes down. And engineering all of a sudden reports that they have nothing for helm. Helm, literally, the station blew up and somebody has to go in. Whoever’s the helm officer was quote unquote injured. He gets to go off to… the med bay or whatever and the xo fills in and so we could do up to seven people but for the most part we want to keep it about five or six i mean there’s got to be endless uh scenarios of various different simulators that you could do yeah yep and i’ve talked to a few of them because again from that little gm uh the little game master screen i can actually bring up communications i could tell communications uh you know science vessel whatever you has reported that the black hole is actually a wormhole. And I’ve done that to a couple of people and they’ve actually flown their ship into the black hole.
Speaker 0 | 23:01.562
Oh, so you can mess with people.
Speaker 1 | 23:03.123
Oh yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 0 | 23:07.505
This is, this has been a pleasure. So what if, you know, if I had you, if I had like a, you know, like a final question or anything, what is it? You want to, what do you want to tell the listeners out there?
Speaker 1 | 23:20.092
Well, if you’re ever in the Tampa area, come look us up at Grand Arena. If you’re not in the Tampa, what’s that?
Speaker 0 | 23:26.179
You have a website or anything like that?
Speaker 1 | 23:27.901
Yeah, grandarena.net. We’re also on Facebook. It’s Grand Arena of Mind Expansion or Game. If you’re not in the Tampa area, play more games because really it is about, like I said, it’s problem solving. Whether you’re doing a cooperative board game or you’re playing a competitive board game, you’ve got problems to solve that get laid out in front of you. And it just keeps the mind sharp. I mean, we have people in that club that are 18 years old and we have people in the club that are 80 and 85. So it keeps the mind sharp just playing games.
Speaker 0 | 24:05.300
Jim, sounds like a lot of fun, man. Really does. And I like what you’re doing over there.
Speaker 1 | 24:09.683
Well, so do we.
Speaker 0 | 24:12.464
Well, thank you so much for being on the show. For everyone listening out there, I will put the games that we talked about on the show listed along with Jim’s website in the. the comments or the summary of the show and, uh, Jim, have a great, uh, great rest of your day, man.
Speaker 1 | 24:28.859
Oh, you too. You too. It’s been a pleasure.
