S2E10.1 - John Coveyou (Interview)

#GeniusGames #STEMEducation #SciComm #JohnCoveyou #BoardGames #Science

We've done several episodes on games from Genius Games (Cytosis, Periodic, Genotype), and now we get to speak to the man behind it all: John Coveyou, founder and CEO of Genius Games. John graciously sat down with us to talk about the beginning of Genius Games, the stigma of "educational" games, the challenges and joys of STEM game design, and some of his favorite non-Genius games to play. So sit back and enjoy this conversation with the man who makes our job easy, John Coveyou.

Timestamps

00:00 Introductions
01:55 History of John and Genius Games
07:50 Designing Educational Games
13:19 Balancing Fun and Realism
20:54 Most Challenging Games to Design
29:55 Upcoming Offerings
36:36 Favorite (Non-Genius) Games
38:23 Wrap-Up

Full Transcript

(Some platforms truncate the transcript due to length restrictions. If so, you can always find the full transcript on https://www.gamingwithscience.net/ )

Jason 0:00
Hello and welcome to the gaming with science podcast where we talk about the science behind some of your favorite games.

Jason 0:07
Today we're talking with John Coveyou, CEO and founder of genius games.

Brian 0:16
Hey everybody. Welcome to a creator interview. I'm Brian.

Jason 0:19
This is Jason,

Brian 0:20
and joining us is John Coveyou from genius games, John, can you introduce yourself?

John 0:26
Sure, yeah, I'm the owner of genius games. I've owned it since about 2011 and we make science accurate board games and jigsaw puzzles for the hobby market.

Brian 0:38
Those are very cool and very popular. I think I like the the frog. One in particular is very good.

John 0:44
You dissect a frog in a lot of public school science classes, so we want to make sure we threw that one in there.

Brian 0:49
I don't think I did a frog. Did you ever do a frog?

John 0:52
I did. I think it was 10th grade biology.

Jason 0:55
I don't remember if I ever dissected a frog. I did do a fetal pig.

Brian 0:59
I remember we did a heart one time and that actually, like, screwed me up for a long time.

John 1:03
Yeah, I don't want to know what this stuff looks like inside of my body. Let me just move on.

Brian 1:10
Fair enough. We're really excited to be able to get you on to talk to us today. Our whole reason for existence is to talk about board games and science and genius games. As you can imagine, we have done many of your games before. We've done cytosis and periodic. We did genotype. We have more games planned in the future. We're going to be doing cellulose and probably whatever else comes down the pipe. Eventually. I'm sure we'll, we'll touch on most, if not all, of the games in the genius library.

John 1:37
Well, that's great, because those are two of my favorite things, science and board gaming and both have, I mean, honestly, had a dramatic impact on my life in many ways. I mean, I run a company that combines those two, but the impact goes much deeper than that. So I'm very excited to talk about both of those things and how they came together. Could you

Jason 1:55
give us a bit of your background there? Because this is not necessarily a logical place to end up. At the intersection of science and board game. Your company basically lives in the space of making what I call hard science games, games where they're not just inspired by science, but they try to portray it accurately and faithfully. What brought you to that place?

John 2:13
Yeah, and you know, it's a long, windy story, but I will try and summarize it as quick as possible. I think when you see a lot of games out there in the marketplace and you see, you know, a science-based game or a STEM-based game, what you're looking at is a product someone wanted to create, to just generate money. I did not arrive at the place of creating a product. I arrived. I mean, I fell in love with the sciences, and also loved board gaming, and those two things kind of randomly came together. So a little bit about my background in the sciences. After high school, I joined the military. I was in the military for eight years total, but only three of it was on active duty. I spent about a year and a half in Iraq in Mosul and Samara. And while I was there, I was enrolled in some university classes, and one was a chemistry class. And reading through I had, I got a lot of time to read through that chemistry textbook, and some other textbooks I had chemistry and some in physics, I think I was taking at the same time, because of the the stressful environment that I was in studying sciences actually became very therapeutic for me, like allowed me to take my mind off of the stress, the anxiety, the difficulty that we were facing as soldiers in that area, and I got to think about like, how atoms were built and how the universe was made, and how atoms combined to form compounds and molecules And and it actually, it was really nice to, like, take my mind off of everything. And so I really fell in love with the sciences in a way, while I was there. And at the same time, we were playing lots and lots of games, a lot of poker, a lot of risk, not, not stuff you would think of when you think about traditional, you know, hobby games. When you think about traditional hobby games, you know, a lot of times you're thinking about like Carcassonne and dominion and Settlers of Catan, which was probably the three most popular, or a ticket to ride. You're thinking about these really popular hobby games you can like buying target. For me, like poker, Texas Hold'em was a big introduction to getting my mind wrapped around the human experience, around games, and then we play a lot of risk, and boy, you know, playing risk in a combat zone with a bunch of angry soldiers, so many risk tables flipped.

Brian 4:29
I feel like risk kind of sits at that, at that space where I know it's not, it's not quite part of what we would consider a modern hobby game, except I'm thinking about risk legacy and how it's kind of been inducted and almost like transitions between the games that most people would have at home and sort of the hobby game space.

John 4:46
Yeah, it was that, yeah, I think Rob Daviau was the guy who did that, and he's an excellent legacy designer. And yeah, that did bring risk into a different place in the board gaming space. But anyway, so I came home. From the military, and I was studying engineering, so I got my degree, and have a master's degree in engineering. Went on to work as an engineer for a while. At the same time, really started to play a lot of other hobby games with some of my family and friends. Got into Dominion pretty heavy. Started playing some of the older stuff, like through the ages and mage night, some of these bigger like, whoa, you can, I mean, you can play these things for hours and hours and hours and real and really, like, never hit the bottom. You know, there's still, like, more game to be played. And I was teaching chemistry. I was teaching chemistry at the community college, and it just kind of struck me, like, Why? Why are we so intimidated by all these science concepts. You know, if I was to tell you that you have three oranges and three apples and each of them weigh one pound, you could do the math. It's real simple. But as soon as you remove these objects that we're really familiar with and you replace them with neutrons and protons, all of a sudden we lose our minds, and we're just like, I can't do it. It's too hard. It's not that hard. These are we're just intimidated, I think, by a lot of these concepts. So So I was thinking through that, and at the same time playing games with some of my friends, and they're like, memorizing just useless information that they'll never use in real life science fiction games. And I'm thinking, like, why is this the case? And it struck me that I just, I wish there was more real science based, like real science based board games, card games something so that when you're playing it, you're playing something that accurately mimics a real science concept, real process. And I think cyt-, you know, jumping forward, I think cytosis, in a lot of ways, is one that I'm the most proud of, in that sense, because it, because it's just such an interesting concept, the human cell, that game was really designed around the infrastructure that governs the activity within a human cell. So that's how it happened. That's that's the backstory.

Brian 6:56
What is the mission statement of genius games?

John 6:59
Yeah, that's a great question. We have toyed around with a few different mission statements. We say our core purpose is to create science based products that engage just allow people to have fun with the science concept. The wording isn't too tight on it. You know, I think sometimes you see mission statements, and you're like, what does that even mean?

Brian 7:23
You got to create synergy.

John 7:25
Yeah, Team synergy. And, like, Listen, if I'm in a team and it's not synergetic, I'm leaving. So I don't know what this means,

Brian 7:32
something that we've been dealing with, because, again, we're in this space, and we have, you know, read designer diaries and interviews and what people have said when they're trying to design games that are like this, where they're trying to use science concepts or have sort of an educational undertone to what they're doing. We did an episode on daybreak, which is all about climate change, designed by Matt Leacock and Matteo Menapace, and they were very explicit in the designer diary, they didn't want an "educational game", quote, unquote, very specifically, and that bothered me that this idea that educational is a dirty word in the games industry, or they said chocolate dipped broccoli. I'm just curious, what are your thoughts on that, and how do you kind of deal with that sort of intrinsic bias that a educational game can't be a fun game?

John 8:20
Yeah, that that is such a tough place for us. It is true. The word education in the gaming space is kind of a dirty word. And I think the reason why there, there were so many companies or people trying to create products that were really just to generate revenue to make money, and so you saw a lot of these larger companies do that, and you have things like flashcards that are referred to as games, and they're not game, they're not they're not games, they're just activities. And then a lot of people tried to make something they could sell that maybe accurately depicted some science concept, but it really wasn't fun. Wasn't fun at all. So the passion that went into, or maybe the motivation, I would say, that went into creating that product was just based upon making money, not on making something for the hobby. I love making things for the hobby. I love making games. I love thinking about games and why people have fun or are frustrated in the middle of a decision, what makes a decision in the game really interesting? That's a question that is really hard to answer and really easy to answer at the same time, it's really easy to answer that, but you could talk about it for hours and hours, days, weeks, years, right? What makes it what makes a decision in a game really interesting to make, and if you're not able to sit and think about that and really go deep into what makes it a decision in a game interesting, then you're probably not going to have a game that offers interesting decisions or is not very fun, or is not very enjoyable. And then, like they mentioned, chocolate covered broccoli, you just have. Broccoli, and you basically got to make people eat it. Somehow, you slap the word game on it, even though it's not a fun game or a good game, right? What? And you know, when we market our games. So I would not consider our company an educational game design company. We're not like an educational game publisher, although, if someone was to say, well, you make games that are like educational, right? I would say you can use them for educational purposes. We have a lot of teachers, tons and tons of teachers that take our games and they use them in the classroom. And that's fantastic, and that really brings me joy. But we don't actually design games so that a teacher can pick it up and play it and use it in their classroom. What we design a game for, we take a science concept that you would find, and let's say a biology or a chemistry or a physics 101, class, so a standard concept you'd find in an entry-level science class, and we want to take that concept and we want to make a game about that concept, that even if you remove the science and put zombies or dragons or ninjas or you name it, the game itself would would stand all on its own. People would find the game fun. They'd find the game worth their time. They'd pay to play that game. They'd choose to play that game over any other game. It just so happens that when a scientist looks at that game, they go, "Wow, this science is really accurate". Now, if you want to call that an educational game, you know, be my guest. Call it whatever you'd like. It's really hard to use terms. You know, we use terms like educational or we use the English vocabulary is used to make sense of things that we don't understand. So the word educational is a very fast word to understand something. I have a hard time calling our games educational around hobby game players, because they have, they have an idea about what an education educational game is, and that is a game that is meant to force you to eat your broccoli by covering it in chocolate. Yeah? And that's not what we do. We want you to eat it because you're like, This is good. This is fun.

Brian 12:06
It's really good. Broccoli.

John 12:07
It's really, yeah, it was prepared by a chef.

Brian 12:14
language for this is difficult, we say, I say, a hard science game, yeah? Which I think, or, like you said, a realistic science game is that kind of how you think about this?

John 12:23
I'm not too married to any specific language. We do normally say our games are real science themed games, or hard science themed games, games designed around a science concept. It's tough, because there's not really any clear language to use when someone's like, oh. Because anything I say, they say, Oh. So you make educational games. I mean, we design our games for hobby gamers, right? You'll, you'll see any of our games that you play, you'll see the exact same mechanisms out there in the hobby and other games. Oh, yeah. Like Cytosis, worker placement game, yeah. I mean, there's, there's probably 100 different worker placement games out there, the ecosystem line, all card drafting. Um, Ion a compound building game that's endorsed by the National Science Teachers Association. There's nothing different about the basic mechanisms in that game, as there is from Sushi Go or seven wonders.

Brian 13:14
It's card draft. Oh, so it's card drafting, set man, set creation game.

John 13:18
That's right.

Jason 13:19
So I've got a question for you on this design is that, as you're making a hard science game, you've kind of got the two goals there. You want to be a fun game, and that is definitely a top priority, obviously, from what you said, but you also want to be beholden to the real science. And so my question is, what do you do? How do you manage when those come into conflict when, when do you decide to make a simplification for the sake of fun gameplay, when do you decide to to make the mechanics morph to match the match the reality? How do you make those decisions?

Brian 13:52
And we have a specific example as well, and like and again, we we play games in the hobby. So we know that the mutations in genotype are a game thing, because if you had it realistic, it would never happen, and it wouldn't come up, and it would actually break the game if it happened the way that it needed to.

John 14:09
Okay, so let me I'll address this in two ways. The first is, I'll tell you what traditionally happens, and then I'll tell you how we design games. We get pitches all the time from designers, and they say, Hey, I got a really great game, you know, you have this mechanism and that mechanism, and it's themed around whatever biology, cell biology or plant biology. One of the first questions I ask is it "could, could you just completely take this theme off and replace it with anything else?" Right? Now, was this really a game designed around something else and you just slapped this biology design on top of it. Usually the answer is yes, the game is just themed around. You could just slap any old theme on it. You can kind of tell when you play a game like that that this theme is not really embedded in the in the design. When we make a game, we start with a concept, a science concept, and the first thing that I do personally. Me as I map that whole science concept out, I map out the primary resources involved in that game. So let's talk about psychosis as an example. Because I think that that's cell biology is probably the most like ubiquitous concept you you don't get to you don't get through high school biology without learning up the human cell at least once, right? Oh, mitochondria, the powerhouse of the cell. Every time I talk about this, someone says that, so we'll just get that out of the way. So cell biology, okay, What? What? What are the basic resources of a human cell? Well, you have nucleic acids, carbohydrates, you have proteins, and you have lipids, fats, and I might be missing something else in there, because I feel like it's, oh, yeah, energy ATP. These, if you take a biology class, you're going to hear about these four or five resources over and over and over again. I mean, you read them on the package food food labels, right? How many, how many carbohydrates does this have? How much protein does it have, how much fat does it have? The reason why those three things show up, it doesn't tell you how many nucleic acids it has, but the reason why those three resources show up is because they're literally the building blocks of the human body. They're the building blocks of a human cell. And when we built, when I first designed that game, I stopped and I said, you know, what are the basic building blocks inside the human body? Well, it's the main macromolecules, and here they are. Okay. Now, how does a human cell now? How is a human cell built? Well, a human cell has a Golgi apparatus. It has endoplasmic reticulum, it has a nucleus, it has a plasma membrane. So like so, how do all these things work? And we basically mapped all that out. Here's how DNA replicates. Here's how DNA turns into RNA. Here's how RNA turns into proteins. Here's how the proteins interact with other lipids to decorate them, to turn them into useful molecules and hormones and other things. And here's each organelle involved in that process. We just mapped it all out. There's no game there's no game here. There's zero game here. It's basically a model that shows how resources move through the different factories within a human cell, and then we say, Okay, what is the motivation of the human cell? What is it trying to achieve? Well, the human cell is trying to thrive on its own. Produce resources to communicate throughout the body. Produce resources for the body to use. Okay, how could a player take on the same motivation as a cell and then be awarded points for those things. And how could we create or put some mechanisms in place to limit the amount of resources in certain ways so that a player has to make an interesting decision to gain their path towards whatever they're motivated towards scoring points, whatever it is, and then that's where basic game mechanisms come into play. Worker placement was perfect. You place a worker that takes the spot up. You place a you place a worker inside of the nucleus, and you get RNA. You place a worker the mitochondria. Well, there you can take some ATP, or you can convert your carbohydrates into ATP.

Brian 14:09
It's the powerhouse of the cell,

John 14:55
powerhouse of the cell. So you just keep doing that, right? You turn this model you have into actual resources. You limit them with game mechanisms, traditional game mechanisms, and then you just play test it, play test it, play test it, and play test it until you have something that's not just enjoyable, but really mimics the science. Now you asked, What at some point you do run into this where you've got to take you have to simplify things, or you have to take liberties for the gameplay. And I think you know that that's a it's really hard to articulate how you do that. That's an art more than a science, but you just do it in a way that still has integrity to the science concept. And then you make it very clear when you took liberties. And that's why we have in all of our games, we put a science behind document, and in that document, we explain how the science is accurately represented in the game, and then we also explain, here's the areas we took liberties.

John 15:41
And this is something that you that genius games does, that nobody else in the space really makes as much of a point of doing. And one of the things that really make me appreciate the way that you design your games. And I call this showing your work.

John 19:24
Yeah,

Brian 19:24
there's so few people that show their work,

John 19:26
yeah, yeah, just show it. And also just show when you're wrong. Hey, I know I'm wrong here. I know this is not the way it works. I had to do that to make a game. At some point, we got to make a game here. But just tell me that. And then I'm like, oh, yeah, I trust you even more, instead of it feeling sneaky, you know.

Brian 19:42
That's kind of how science is supposed to work. If you're wrong, you just say you're wrong, right?

John 19:47
Yeah, yeah. If I'm wrong, here's the areas that will show where I where I could be wrong. Please, someone go investigate that, because if I'm wrong, I'd like to know that y'all gain from that and the other, the other thing I'll mention about the science behind documents. We don't create those internally. Those were crowd sourced. So we have a huge group of scientists who get together all over the world, a lot of PhDs, a lot of doctors, a lot of grad students and and they will each take a section, they'll play the game, they understand the science. They'll take a section, we have one lead editor, and they'll write sections to explain each of the main science principles in the game, and then where we took liberties. And so it's like we tried to do that. We don't want to be biased. Well, like this is a third party saying where the game is working, where the game is not working.

Brian 20:36
It's peer reviewed.

Jason 20:37
Yeah, right. Well, okay, so now I know a listserv that we need to get on, Brian.

Brian 20:41
yeah, I was gonna say, like, well, I'd like to volunteer as tribute, but I'm sure you've got all of the expertise that you need.

John 20:48
We're always open for volunteers, alway. never, never too many

Jason 20:54
Are there any games you've went through where that process of building the scientific model, translating that into a game where that was either particularly fun or particularly difficult.

John 21:05
Oh, always both. Yeah, it's, it's, it is never easy. If it's easy, something's wrong, like, what, how did, how did we, if it's easy, it was like an accident that it was easy, right? And I've been working on a game about the human immune response, working on this game for probably eight years.

Brian 21:23
Okay,

John 21:24
it's, it's basically, it's a tower defense game where

Brian 21:27
Fantastic

John 21:28
it's like a cut on the human skin. Bacteria is coming in, Staph, strep, pseudococus, I think, is the proper name of the other kind of bacteria that i is coming in. And then, right now, it's based mainly on, like a bacterial infection, so bacteria, and fairly common bacteria, they have on your skin, and then, and then the game is basically a tower, tower defense game, where this cut is like the pathway that the bacteria is coming in, and then your body builds up this immune response and sends in neutrophils and macrophages, and then some other things, B cells, T cells, and things like that that might come from from an adaptive immune response later on. And the game is supposed to mimic how the body builds up this response and fights off these bacteria and closes the wound. And then we want to expand this, this little model and mechanism, into other types of wounds, or other types of infections, you know, so you have, you have skin puncturing, and then you've got bacteria coming in. Well, what about like a nasal infection or an ear infection? Because you don't have punctured skin, necessarily, you've got native bacteria that got into your nose. Or what about a different kind of infection? What about an infection in your in one of your organs? Or what about a viral? What about what happens with a virus? Well, that's totally different.

Jason 22:51
The covid expansion.

John 22:53
Oh, yeah, yeah, we'll get, we'll get real controversial. We could get into all kinds of stuff, right? I mean, how they but the crazy thing is, the crazy thing is, it's not, it's not cut and dry, even on something as simple as a just a cut on your skin. People's people's immune systems are quite unique, depending upon how their immune system the immune system is a reactive thing. It's not a proactive. You know, you're not born with a perfect immune system. You build your immune system up over time. It's very reactive. You introduce things to the human body, and it builds up antibodies and builds up a response to those things, because it's aware of what the greatest threats are. So so each body might respond slightly differently. And so building this game has been challenging in many ways, it also challenging because it's really the human immune response is unbelievably complicated, and any simplification you want to make is erroneous, right? Because it's so complicated. So we are right now facing we have been facing that for many years, and I've put the game away and then gotten it back out, and then put the game away and then gotten it back out over eight years, just over and over and over again. So yes, a lot of fun, but also it's never not a challenge. And if it is, I would say, why was that? Something's wrong. We must have something wrong here. We must have the science wrong. If it was that easy,

Brian 24:18
well, that's really cool. And that actually addresses another question is, what is that, That theme you've been trying to do, but just haven't been able to crack yet? So I guess we've got an answer to that as well, the human immune system.

John 24:29
Yeah, the human immune system. That's definitely one. You know. The other one, though, I would say, is even harder, is cosmology, space. Oh, because in here's why, where are the resources that you're limiting? Where is the human decision? Where is the, you know, like, like, it's okay, here's the solar system. They're not changing paths. They're not changing trajectory. They're not like, how do you how do you enter in player agency, into the system? You've got to come up with something else. Like, oh. Oh, there's people jumping between the planets. Okay, well, now we're not talking about science anymore. We're talking about science fiction. Maybe we're talking about futuristic science, sure, but, but we really have to. We're really grasping for something here when we try and make a game around that, and I say that because we have tried to make a game about, you know, planets, solar system, galaxy, something, right the and it has always been very challenging. We all we face the same thing with most physics concepts. Because physics concepts, you know, we actually, I have been designing the game for a long, long time called, I've called it a lot of different things, motion, a Newtonian physics game. The other name we had for it was physics Park. And one of my staff and I got into a argument about F = ma, force equals mass times acceleration. And we and we argued about this for weeks. And we're like, first of all, it's like, the nerdiest thing in the world to argue about, you know, F = ma weeks. But second, it was like, we couldn't with the argument was about the argue. The argument was about, like, consequences and agency, you know, and I don't even remember the details, but it was like, you know, no force is the force is the consequence of something accelerating, a mass accelerating. And you're like, No, you have to push. You have to, like, push, and the acceleration is due to the force. And we're going back and going, like, how do we use this in a game? And we kept arguing about what the like, the beginning motivation was. And so it finally the game just fell apart because we couldn't stop arguing about F = ma. Anyway. So these concepts, about, like, you know, physics, macro scale physics, like Planetary Physics, all the way down to, you know, F = MA with a cart, we couldn't get around this idea that that's not the way it works. You know, you can't just run out there in the middle of the track and push the cart along, like, it's not how it works.

Brian 26:54
So anyway, so, yeah, I guess so it's, it's the, it's the cause versus effects. Problem of like, well, what, what is the player controlling? It's kind of like you can imagine a cosmology game where you're tweaking the starting conditions of the universe. We're changing the Planck constant that but what does that mean? What does that actually turn into?

Jason 27:12
That means you're playing nature gods. Yeah. And we have several games where that's basically what you're doing. You are the nature God, creating this world and populating it with things, and that's really the metaphor of what's going on. I do wonder, like you mentioned, you've struggled with physics games, and we've noticed that in this space, there's way, way, way more games inspired by biology than any other field in the sciences. And I wonder if it's just because biology is where things get really, really complicated, and where you have agency being able to come in with actual decision making of creatures or of humans, or if it's just complex enough that you can't just plug in some equations and you know the exact result. There's always noise, there's always randomness. And so I wonder if that's why it just has a more handle for people to go in and turn it into a game because of just all the complexity that's there.

John 28:02
Yeah, I thought about that a lot. I think it does. I think there are just more like pathways in biology to mimic with a game. You know, when you take a pathway, you have clear like inputs and outputs, and so you can, you can, you can produce a game around those inputs and outputs, because you can model it and because you can like, like, you know, the reason why something like human disease exists is because there's something is off about the inputs and outputs, whereas with physics, you can't really change inputs and outputs. It's like Newtonian physics. When you change one thing, there's a very for the most part, with some very, very minuscule exceptions. There's a when you change one thing in Newtonian physics, there's a very defined outcome that we're aware of exists, and that's how we know, that's how we know Newtonian physics is true outside of the very small and the very big. Then we've got to put some fudge factors in there to make it work. But with biology, it's like you've got a pathway, and the the interesting things happen when the pathway is manipulated, or resources come in, half put together, or half put out. And so it's just easier to, like, play with that process, to play with that pathway. If that makes sense.

Brian 29:14
I think it does. I think a lot of biology is like a game, right? I mean, you look at how living things interact, and it is fundamentally, it is risk management. It is a game it is input versus output.

John 29:25
Yes, yes, yeah.

Jason 29:27
There's probably a few theses out there of applying game theory to natural selection and how you look at the way certain organisms have solved certain problems, and they follow a game theory tactic. And I'm sure that's out there somewhere.

Brian 29:40
I mean, you can see the same sorts of ecosystems pop up again and again and again, with things occupying the same roles. You see, you know, hydrodynamic shapes in aquatic reptiles and in sharks and whales, just over and over and over again, solving the same problems. What's on the what's on the horizon for genius games?

John 29:58
Yeah. So. We got pretty heavy into jigsaw puzzles, which I'm excited about. So we have a whole series of kids floor puzzles that are illustrated by a certified medical illustrator from Johns Hopkins University. The two that have not hit retail yet are the cat and the dog, which we didn't want to make a cat and dog anatomy puzzle, because I just thought, you know, it's just no kid wants to see, you know, their pet puppy's anatomy. That's not but at the same time, it's like, well, that's the animal they're actually probably most familiar with.

Brian 30:35
Those kids who want to become veterinarians, they come from somewhere.

John 30:39
absolutely, yes, absolutely. And so that's something that we have invested pretty heavily into. And the next release in that line is the cat and the dog. Outside of that, the games that I am working on currently are the game about the human immune response, which the name that the name we're currently working with is just immunology. That's the name of the game, all right, immunology, a human immune system game, and that game, I don't know how long it's gonna take me. We'll see it's, it's one of those things where, like, once the core, the core concept, is working really well, but all these additional scenarios, it's the sky's the limit. I mean, really, any game, the challenge we have with every game is, when do we say it's done? Because it's never like, perfect. It's never actually, actually done. It's just weird. We don't want to work on it anymore. We just want to publish. Yeah, you

Brian 31:33
just got to decide when you're done, right? Yeah.

Jason 31:35
Week is at the same point with scientific manuscripts, yeah,

John 31:38
yeah, yeah. It's like, Is it perfect? No, it's not perfect. Is it done? Yeah. I'm sick of writing it. I'm sick of doing it. It needs to see the light of day. It's got to get off of my plate. And then the motion, the motion game, or physics park, or whatever we decide to name that. That's another one. We actually are working on a game as well that we're, we've, we've gone back and forth on whether this fits in the genius games brand or not, and we've concluded that it fits well enough to move forward. But it's a game about running a Veterinary Clinic, and we was designed by two veterinarians, and they brought us the game, and it was, was a bit simpler than what we would like to see as far as mechanisms. But what really struck me was the methodology they use to heal the animals in the game is what the veterinarians use in the clinic. And I really like that, because I would love to design a game about how a vet diagnosis issues within a animal, and then how they solve and cure that animal and how they run their clinic. And so it's, it's, it's just sciencey enough that we feel comfortable publishing it, but it's even more, a little bit more about like running a veterinarian clinic. So that's one I'm excited about as well. And then we have a whole series. We're producing a whole bunch more of games in the ecosystem line.

Brian 33:05
We've, we have not played this yet, and we clearly need to, where do we get started with ecosystem

John 33:11
so I would, I would suggest the first ecosystem game is probably the place to start. And it's just, it's just a generic ecosystem, if you really, if you want to be really critical, you could probably say, you know, some of these animals don't interact the way you show in this game. And that's that'd be a fair criticism of the game. What we're when we originally licensed the game, it was a designer who pitched the game to us when we originally licensed it. I thought, I don't know, you know, it's not, it's not heavy enough in the sciences, but it's not like, like, it's not, it doesn't accurately, you know, show how a model, an ecosystem, functions. But it was, it was, it was a really fun game. And what I, what I thought, was, this will help us expand our line and as some more mass market types of channels where people will sort of bridge. I'm not a hard science person. I'm not a hard game a hard gamer. I like some light science, and I like some animals and some light game play. Great. This is a perfect like intro game, really easy play, card drafting. You're building an ecosystem. Who doesn't love doing that, and so we've we are now expanding that into a line of games that that just hone in on specific ecosystems. So we did the Savannah, and now we're looking at the Amazon rainforest, as well as the Australian Outback,

Brian 34:36
Oh fun,

John 34:37
as well as what's the other one? A tundra, oh, and then the Alpine mountains, like like animals that you'd see, you know, in the Rockies. And so trying to really hone in on specific ecosystems and show the animals and interactions in that ecosystem with, you know, plants, whatever water basis they have, whatever fauna basis they have. What predators they have, and just show how some of them interact. But again, if you that's the lightest of all the science games we have, but it is maybe the most approachable. If you're like, Hey, I know about the Rockies, or I know about savannas, or I know about, you know, what Australian, Australian Outback and I like koalas. You know,

John 34:37
who doesn't like koalas, except for people who actually have actually have to work with them? No, it sounds like really fun. It seems like it's, it's a great way to expand out. You could even have, like, prehistoric ecosystems or, or, you know, coral reefs.

John 35:34
Yeah, you've you so you, yeah, you went there. we are designing a series we haven't told we haven't mentioned this anywhere, designing a series that goes from now this is like, this is, you know, does it fit squarely under what genius games does? Nor, you know, traditionally, not really. But we're designing a whole series that is starting with the dinosaurs and then moving into prehistoric humans, and then civilization, and then colonizing Mars. So we went out like, Oh, wow. You know, four game set where you just kind of see this trajectory of, you know, humanity. And, yes, we're taking a lot more liberties in that than, you know, we are with other things, but, but it's fun, but it's fun.

Brian 36:20
Fun is key.

John 36:21
Yes.

Jason 36:21
All right, so I know we're getting near the end of our window. I've got one more question for you. We won't make you pick among your favorite children by asking your favorite news games put out, but I'm curious, what are some of your favorite games, not by genius games. What are the favorite ones you've seen elsewhere in this ecosystem?

John 36:39
I have a lot of favorite games that my answer would actually depend upon who I'm playing games with, because that's going to really dictate what what I'm going to play

Brian 36:48
That's a very good answer

John 36:49
if I'm playing with if I'm trying to introduce people into gaming, I would play Werewords, which is just, I'm in one of, like, the best games ever. It's so good, I'd play werewords, or I would play crew, or I would play Port Royale. Those are, like, the three little light games. You can teach it in five to 10 minutes. You can play it. And there's a whole lot of other really good games out there too, but those are the ones I'd play. You know, if I had new gamers, if I'm if I'm gonna play games with people that are like gamers, but they don't want, they don't have three hours. Or maybe not even like gamers, but just people who want a little more oomph. I'd play stone age. I love stone age. I play a lot of Stone Age. Or I would play like citadels or Santa's workshop. Recently, we're approaching the holidays. Santa's Workshop might be one of my favorite games right now. It's so good or pandemic pretty, like, good cooperative, not too heavy, pretty light fun. If I'm gonna play, and I'm gonna, like, really go deep, though, and play some heavier stuff, I would play mage knight, or I would play through the ages, Puerto Rico, or San Juan, the card game, which is a great introductory version of that. Yeah, I think that that's, that's, or, you know, Pandemic Legacy, you know, why not? Like, why not go through that whole thing again? Yeah, the, those are my favorite games right now.

Brian 38:08
Jason and I solidified our friendship over Pandemic Legacy, and then, actually, we stopped playing pandemic during the pandemic.

Jason 38:16
Yeah, it was too close to home.

John 38:19
What a weird game to play during the pandemic. Also, why not?

Brian 38:23
Yeah, I think with that, we should probably start wrapping this up again. We appreciate you taking the time to talk to us and, you know, giving us all this great insight into genius games and science games in general.

Jason 38:34
Yeah, well, I'm gonna say John. So for people who want to know more about genius games or about your products coming out, where should they look for it?

John 38:40
Yeah, the easiest place would be our website, genius games. We're on Facebook, we're on Instagram. We have a newsletter. We try and send a newsletter out maybe once every two months or so. We really try and not bog people down unless there is a new release or, you know, a big promotion going on, or something like that. So those would be the best places.

Jason 39:00
Thank you so much, John, for coming on. We really appreciate it. This has been on Brian's bucket list for at least a year,

Brian 39:05
absolutely.

Jason 39:05
So we are very happy to have been able to talk with you, and we are we really enjoy genius games. We always joke that you do half our work for us.

Brian 39:13
Yep, thanks for making our job easy,

Jason 39:15
and we're really looking forward to playing more of your games over the next years. So thank you

John 39:19
awesome. Thank you, Brian. Thank you, Jason. I appreciate the time.

Brian 39:22
All right, we're going to cut it there. Thanks for tuning in. We hope you have a great month and great games.

Jason 39:26
And as always, have fun playing dice with the universe. See ya.

Brian 39:29
This has been the gaming with Science Podcast copyright 2025 listeners are free to reuse this recording for any non commercial purpose, as long as credit is given to gaming with science. This podcast is produced with support from the University of Georgia. All opinions are those of the hosts, and do not imply endorsement by the sponsors. If you wish to purchase any of the games that we talked about, we encourage you to do so through your friendly local game store. Thank you, and have fun playing dice with the universe.

Brian 39:55
I have swag that I'd like to send you or to your team for the podcast. Podcast, including a set of our own printed workers for cytosis. Our little we made kineeples. They're kinesin meeples, so the actual workers of the cell, I've got all the colors from cytosis, so I'd love to send you a copy of those.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai

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S2E10.1 - John Coveyou (Interview)

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