❝Story02:30
Poetry for Neanderthals: a year of cutting a pitch down to one word
Lee walks the full case study of Poetry for Neanderthals from inception. Jacob and Francesca approached him at OR Camp in Chicago, an invite-only conference of about a hundred people where Lee — a self-described crazy introvert with nowhere to hide — decided to give everyone the benefit of the doubt. Their premise was simulating being bad at a foreign language by restricting every word in a sentence to one syllable. Lee's verdict was blunt: it was not a good game, but it was a genuinely interesting core gameplay loop, because communication becomes hard and you need your friends' help to get from caveman talk back to English. The next year was pure subtraction, tested through the Kitty Test Pilots, a group of families that took roughly seven years to build and receives deliberately half-baked prototypes. Feedback came back brutal — cumbersome, too hard, eight-minute turns, not enough time. The team cut sentences to five or six words, then three, then two, and each time it was still too much, until they asked why they were complicating it at all and reduced the game to a single word per card. Words like teeth were then chosen deliberately because describing them forces funny stumbles, and Matt Inman added the inflatable club as a punishment and named the game on sight.
- Lee rejected the pitch as a game but accepted it as a core gameplay loop, and that distinction justified a year of development.
- The Kitty Test Pilots are families who volunteered to hear about new games and instead receive very half-baked prototypes to critique.
- Reduction proceeded in aggressive halves on both the workload and the timer, ending at one word and roughly forty-five seconds.
- The breakthrough was a question about their own assumptions rather than an experiment: why are we complicating this?
- Components were then chosen for the behaviour they provoke, with teeth explicitly calculated to produce stumbling and laughter.
“we took the sentences down to like five or six words still too much we took them down to three words still too much took…”
“once we realized that we were bringing baggage through for no reason the game got really simple really fun”
“we regularly send them out very very half-baked ideas and we ask them just to send us feedback”
#game-design#iteration#playtesting#simplification#product-development
❝Story18:30
A ten thousand dollar goal and an almost nine million dollar check
Tim opens the Kickstarter section by referencing a framed fraud alert. Lee explains that the campaign's target was ten thousand dollars in thirty days, and the bank had generously raised their deposit alert ceiling to fifty thousand dollars. The check they tried to deposit at the end of those thirty days was almost nine million. Tim presses on the loaded deck — Lee's Microsoft and Xbox background, and Matt Inman's decade of building The Oatmeal — and Lee accepts it. Inman had spent about ten years writing one-to-four-panel comedy comics, some Eisner-winning, and had earned an audience's trust as a genuinely high-quality artist. Lee met him through a mutual friend, pitched the game, and launched the campaign roughly three weeks later — fast, Lee says, because they had nothing to lose and did not think it would be a huge success. Inman's task was not designing the game but writing fifty-six one-panel jokes for fifty-six cards. When Inman posted that he had made a game for the first time, millions of views hit the page. The campaign funded in about seven minutes, made a million dollars on day one, two on day two, three on day three — and then, after the first week, fell off a cliff, because everyone Inman could reach had already decided.
- The initial target was ten thousand dollars in thirty days and the final deposit was almost nine million.
- Lee credits two prerequisites explicitly: his alternate reality game background and Matt Inman's decade-old audience at The Oatmeal.
- The campaign launched about three weeks after Lee first met Inman, precisely because they felt they had nothing to lose.
- Inman's contribution was fifty-six one-panel jokes, not game design — art applied to already-refined mechanics.
- The collapse after week one was audience exhaustion, not product fatigue: the tank was simply empty.
“the check that we tried to deposit at the end of those 30 days was almost $9 million”
“we built it fast cuz we had nothing to lose we we didn't think it would be a huge success we just thought this feels…”
“after the first week it fell off a cliff and the reason is is just because everyone who matt could reach who was interested in…”
#kickstarter#crowdfunding#launch#the-oatmeal#audience
❝Story1:06:30
Jordan Weisman, Spielberg walking into the office, and the birth of The Beast
Lee met Jordan Weisman at Microsoft after failing out of several colleges and talking his way into an internship at Industrial Light and Magic, where his actual job on Star Wars was the connective tissue on Jar Jar Binks' neck so it would not tear as the actor moved. Microsoft ignored his transcripts and hired him on the strength of Star Wars alone, as a producer on the Xbox group. Within two weeks Weisman pulled him aside, told him he was a terrible producer, and said he might be a really good designer instead — then threw him onto projects like Halo. Weisman's commandments were drilled in: nothing attracts a crowd like a crowd, and you have a violin, I have a barn, let's put on a show — do not overthink it, go tomorrow, you will learn a lot and you will fail and both are fine. Lee admits that if he had run their alternate reality company they would have been paralysed; Weisman instead cold-called Steven Spielberg claiming they could market his game better than anyone, and Spielberg later walked into Lee's office to explain what AI was about. When the film's ending proved so bleak that all four Xbox games had to be cancelled after a year of work, Lee sat heartbroken with Weisman in a Seattle sushi restaurant, arguing that Sean Stewart's narrative glue deserved release. Weisman's phone rang, and he asked: what if that was the story calling us right now.
- Lee failed out of several colleges and was hired at Microsoft purely on the strength of an Industrial Light and Magic internship.
- Weisman told him within two weeks that he was a terrible producer but might be a good designer, and switched his role.
- Weisman's two drilled-in commandments were nothing attracts a crowd like a crowd, and you've got a violin, I've got a barn.
- The Spielberg relationship began with a cold call from a company that had no product and no idea what it was doing.
- All four AI video games were cancelled after a year, and the leftover narrative glue became The Beast, the first alternate reality game.
“nothing attracts a crowd like a crowd and yeah try as hard as you want to market something get a crowd that's what actually matters”
“you've got a violin i've got a barn let's put on a show right like don't overthink this just go just like tomorrow put on…”
“his phone rang and he looked at me and he said what if that was the story calling us right now”
#mentorship#jordan-weisman#microsoft#alternate-reality-games#career
❝Story1:23:30
The Pixar model for kids' games: I can't let her win, and she has to win anyway
Asked what game he would make under a pen name, Lee shares something he says he is not allowed to share. He has a five-year-old and a one-year-old, and he hates playing games with his daughter — not because of her but because commercial kids' games are awful, and he dreads another round of Candyland while she has a blast because she is getting attention. His diagnosis is that the model is wrong, and the fix is the Pixar model: an experience the child loves and a different experience the parent loves, delivered through the same tool set. So for two years, every night, he and his daughter got out paper, stickers and markers and made games. They built twenty or thirty; a few are genuinely good, and she helped design them. The design constraint he set himself is severe and doubled: because she is still at the age where everything is about her and she has no awareness of whether he is enjoying himself, the game must celebrate her and let her win — but he cannot let her win, he must be trying his hardest, and she has to beat him anyway. Games that failed that test got scrapped. The keepers are the ones where they both have a blast and he genuinely wants to say yes when she asks to play again. Those games are heading to retail that year.
- Lee's premise is that the kids' game category is structurally broken because it entertains only the child.
- His model is Pixar: one tool set producing two distinct experiences the child and the parent each love.
- Two years of nightly prototyping with paper, stickers and markers produced twenty or thirty games.
- The design constraint is that he must genuinely try to win and she must beat him anyway — no letting her win.
- The keepers passed the same replay test as his commercial games, with a handful reaching retail that year.
“what if the kids could have an experience that they love and the parents could have a different experience through the same tool set that…”
“i cannot let her win i have to be trying my hardest and she has to beat me anyway”
“we eventually ended up with a hand full of games that all satisfy that criteria that i don't let her win and she wins anyway”
#kids-games#parenting#design-constraints#pixar-model#prototyping
❝Story1:43:00
Peter Chernin, forty million dollars, and the worst presentation Jesse had ever seen
For years Exploding Kittens owned one hundred percent of itself and had nobody to answer to. Milestones were strange: instead of begging for distribution, people knocked on their door begging to sell, distribute and market the game, so every milestone was permission granted rather than a deal won. Investors kept arriving and Lee could say that money was the one thing they did not need. Then Peter Chernin came to the office. Told no thanks, he made his pitch anyway: they had grown as far as a game company should, and the next step was to stop being a game company and start being an intellectual property company — TV shows, movies, theme parks — and he happened to be the best in the world at those. Lee and Inman took the investment, spent about twelve hours regretting it, and then Chernin asked who they would most want to make a TV show with. They said Mike Judge and Greg Daniels, knowing it was absurd. The next afternoon both men were sitting on Chernin's couch. Lee raised forty million dollars, which he says is still sitting in the bank because they did not need it but it mattered as a signifier, and learned that taking investment turns exit from an if into a when. Their first board deck was, in partner Jesse Jacobs' words, the worst presentation he had ever seen — and the Chernin Group then trained them, forced them to define what failure meant, and made them hire their first accountant and CFO after five years of Lee running the books in Google Sheets.
- For years the company was entirely founder-owned and its milestones were permissions granted to others rather than deals won.
- Chernin's pitch was to stop being a game company and become an intellectual property company.
- The forty million raised still sits in the bank; Lee took it as a signifier and for the capability, not the cash.
- Taking investment converts exiting the company from an if into a when, which took Lee time to absorb.
- The Chernin Group's value was discipline — defining failure, board hygiene, and the first accountant after five years of Google Sheets.
“we had this incredible luxury to say you know money is the one thing we just don't need”
“the next step is to stop being a game company and start being an intellectual property company and what that means is tv shows and…”
“we're interested in help we're not interested in having bosses”
#fundraising#investors#board-governance#intellectual-property#scaling