I'm gonna bite and ask a question about Into the Dead. Let's talk about this idea of "porting" a game from digital to physical.
First of all, there's the notion that a board game could recreate the complexity of certain game mechanics, that a computer game calculates on the fly (IMO, it can't)
But earlier today I got a thought about environmental impact of board game production, after playing CO2 last night. There's a lot of paper, wood, and plastic getting produced for stuff that is becoming more and more disposable. Despite that, games don't really tout recyclable material much at all (either by using recycled material, or asking consumers to recycle when done).
So then at the junction of these two problems is this game just presented to us, Into the Dead. It was a digital game (presumably with no factory production involved), and now it's been "ported" to a format where it's maybe not quite the same as the original version, but uses a ton of paper and plastic.
Can you tell us about the production process of the game, and whether you considered the environmental cost of taking a digital game to a big pile of stuff on a table as in that photo? I'm not asking to be preachy about it, I just think the idea of "digital to cardboard" uniquely highlights the issue of overproduction in board games.
Sure. Some good points there.
To speak firstly to our philosophy as a company, while software development is relatively low footprint compared to most industries, we are conscious of any impact we have on the environment and it factors into decisions we make as owners and managers. For example, we recycle paper, cardboard, plastics, and cans etc. Our water cooler is plumbed directly into the main supply, so we don't use large plastic water bottles, and we supply glassware so people don't consume plastic or paper cups. We limit the use of printed materials in favour of digital solutions. We are even the first non food service company in NZ to have a fast food restaurant style Coke soda fountain installed in order to pretty much eliminate the use of cans and bottles.
Now, has any of that thinking factored into the creation of the board game. The straight forward answer is no.
We haven't really discussed the environmental impact of producing a board game, perhaps because it isn't expected to be a regular exercise and isn't at the core of what we do. Day to day people working here usually don't
need to think about it, because day to day it usually isn't an issue, so it isn't built into our process. At the very least, we don't expect to have a meaningful impact because ultimately the volume of units is going to be low, and we expect copies to be able to be used and cherished for decades rather than being a disposable, polluting product. I guess a similar thing would apply to our decision to create a 1000 limited edition vinyl release of the soundtrack for one of our successful console titles, Shatter.
What we
can do now is raise environmental impact as a consideration as we finalize our decisions around manufacturing and materials. My guess is we'll be quite limited in what gains we could achieve though.
I guess part of what you are asking is "does a boardgame version of the digital game need to exist if the digital version offers the same experience with much lower environmental impact"? Certainly the existence of a boardgame version at all (assuming we get funded) will create more environmental than it not existing. Perhaps selfishly, given most of what we do is wholly digital and ephemeral, we partly greenlit this out of a desire to have a physical manifestation of our work, as a lot of what we do now won't be accessible/playable at all in 5-10 years. But I'd argue, while we are in part positioning the game as a "port", the reality is we are bringing a lot of new stuff to the table that doesn't exist in the videogame such as multiplayer gameplay and interaction, more strategic gameplay, new characters, new artwork/models, physical presence/tangibility etc. It's a new experience that "feels" like the videogame in some aspects because it shares some familiar content and high level concepts, but ultimately it is a new experience and one that will reach new audiences. The same is probably true of any IP moving from a more digital form such as film, digital comics, or videogames into the board game space.
I guess, you could step back and ask a similar question for a lot of IP and media, for example "do collectable figurines of movie characters need to exist when the movie exists"? More on the nose would be "should DVD/Bluray versions of movies exist when digital copies are available"? That's getting well beyond the scope of your more specific raised point, but worthy of conversation (elsewhere) as we collectively enter a more dire climate situation.
So, to summarize, we usually consider the environmental impact when running our company, but we haven't in this case because it didn't occur to us to as this is an unusual exercise outside the norm for us. However, ultimately this will be a niche, low volume enduring product that should have limited net environmental impact, and we can review our manufacturing and materials plans to see if there is opportunity to reduce that impact further. And we feel it is not redundant relative to the existing videogame series as it is (we feel) bringing something new and interesting to both the IP itself and the board game space in terms of gameplay and content.
Hope that answers you question.
