An Interview with Maggie Elkin

What inspired you to do this game?

I think the seeds for this game came from several sources.  The most prominent was the consistent message when I came into this industry that “women don’t play games except with their children or at parties.”  It was quite a challenge for me to except that generalization as fact because I had grown up in a household where the women in my life would get together to play cards. 

The other seed came from my girlfriends not being interested in playing the games that TableStar Games was designing.  They did not want to work in their free time and the hobby game market games that we were producing were too much work for them to be fun for them.  They wanted a quick game that was no work at all, fun, modern, and could be played with food or drink in one hand.  It also had to be easy to learn and connect to them in some way.

Those two ideas finally came together in a working model for the game at a trade show.  Peter Hansell, our Art Director, and I were sitting in a corner of the trade show exhibit floor nursing sore feet when I brought up my idea for a matchmaking game.  Peter, being a much more experienced and technical game designer than I, started developing cohesive rules around my idea and Martinis and Men was born.  It took a while to tweak the rules, game play, and art, but the final game is very close to the game that we made up on that brown convention floor carpet completely exhausted and really needing a drink.

Why the title: Martinis and Men?

I made up the title off of the top of my head sitting on the floor of the exhibit hall where the game was born.  It had loosely came from a great book that I had been reading that week entitled Without Lying Down by Cari Beauchamp.  It is an excellent book and very inspirational.  Without Lying Down is a book about the influence that women had in early Hollywood.  Although it is not my industry, I still like reading books about strong, successful women who stayed true to their humanity.  The women used to have “cat nights” where they would get together and essentially have a high-powered “girls’ night.”  They were a support group for one another- very inspirational.

So, I guess I was thinking of them a little when I thought of a fun name for the game.  If I was going to make a game for women, it was not going to talk down to them but instead give them a vehicle to get together and blow off steam with the important women in their life.

Funny fact, Martinis and Men was actually the prototype name for the game!  We could not come up with a better name and even more than that, it tested really well so we kept it.  I mean, technically, there are martinis and men in the game, but the title is in no way descriptive of the game play or the theme- really.  It’s just fun.

Have you designed other games?

When I was a child, our family always played board games.  My mother’s favorite was Yahtzee- she even had her Yahtzee dance when she got a Yahtzee.  We also played a ton of other games, but none so boring and slow to me than Monopoly.  I know that a lot of people love the game, but to a hyperactive nine year old, it was worse than having to sit through a long, boring documentary on drying paint.  So, I decided to make it more fun- fun meaning quicker to me.  I think that I combined the rules from Risk!, Life, and a couple other games and made my own version of Monopoly.  I believe that my parents still have my augmented board, however, I am not sure we ever wrote down the rules.

I also have design team credit for three of the 2006 HeroCard games that TableStar Games produced: HeroCard Galaxy, HeroCard Cyberspace, and HeroCard Rise of the Shogun.  Helping with the game design was a great experience for me.  Our staff design team is excellent and really picked my brain for that first year.  I am proud that my small contributions to the games helped make truly excellent games that are loved by so many people.

What was the process for designing Martinis and Men?

The initial game design for this game was spontaneous and a majority of the design was done in the initial twenty minutes.  It was then put on the shelf for about a year because it did not fit in our development calendar.  When we started looking at expanding into the mass market, Martinis and Men was at the top of the list.  After that, it was a matter of tweaking the game to make sure that is was fair, played smoothly, and was not too complicated- not as simple as it sounds.  This took a while because we had to play test the game hundreds of times- but was a lot of fun.  I took the game to parties, gatherings, and even played it at the PRSA (Public Relations Society of America) conference.  My co-workers also helped out a lot with the play testing by having all of their friends play as well.  I think Peter Hansell was the king of the play testing there for a while- but then again, women love him!  Indeed, it has been a fun and rewarding process.

Will there be other games like this?

Of course!  After seeing the response from Martinis and Men, we would be crazy not to continue in this direction.  Right now, we are working on variations of Martinis and Men for different audiences and age groups as well as other fun, interesting, and different games.  We have an incredibly talented staff who are not only capable of coming up with a lot of great ideas, but are also very skilled in making a technically great game (it involves a lot of math).  We are looking at themes that have not been heavily explored by games and working on bringing them to people in a really fun way.

Why do you think that “girls’ night” is so important?

Girls’ night is important because I think that it is important for women to regularly reconnect with their core support system.  Men can come and go- and they have- but your girlfriends will be there for you no matter what.  I’m not saying that women get together and men bash- that’s not what it is.  Girls’ night is a safe place where you can vent about the week, your job, your significant other, your parents, your kids, the dog- whatever and feel like there are other women around you that share your experience and can be supportive.  It is the place to celebrate successes and pass the cookie dough and Ben and Jerry’s when there are failures.

The biggest problem that I found in my life and the lives of women I know is that when life gets busy or stressful, we often loose the time together with our female support group.  If we can purposely set aside one evening a week or a month that is reserved only for the women in our lives, no matter where life takes us, we always have our core.  Actually, since I have been on the road a lot with my job, it has not been unusual for me to call into girls’ night to catch up.  Believe me, my chats with my girls when I was on the road occasionally helped me keep from loosing my mind!

At its core, that is what Martinis and Men is about- a distraction from life that we can share in the comforting presence of good friends.  It makes a great bridal shower games- way better than some of the alternatives believe me!  It is small and will fit in your bag to provide quick entertainment at the beach or waiting for your plane at the Seattle airport (yes, there is a story there).  The great thing is its versatility- yes men even like it too!

Let me know what you think.  I’d love to hear from you!  E-mail me at Maggie@MartinisAndMen.com.