The Fantastic Factory’s Steve Evans reveals the secrets behind his company’s terrific creations

We’ve interviewed your Fantastic Factory partner David Snow – Snowy – several times… People can check out those pieces here and here. But who are you?!
I’m Steve Evans and Fantastic Factory is basically David and me… Two guys who took different paths to get into games. Those paths intercut at times but it took us a while to get to the point where we could work with each other in the way that we wanted.

You didn’t come into the industry together? Blazing a trail?!
No, we both worked for different people. David spent a lot of time at Hasbro, while I spent a lot of my early years in advertising. It’s actually a very parallel world… In advertising, I received a brief, came up with a concept, followed it through in whatever execution – usually TV or a poster. The agency I worked for got paid, then I got paid a fee. And at the time, I thought that was the only world in which you could be paid for coming up with ideas.

You couldn’t see it outside advertising?
No, I thought advertising was the only world that you got paid to come up with ideas. When I discovered the games world, I was like, ‘Oh! Is it the same thing? You come up with ideas and sell them…’ It looked slightly different in as much as you don’t always start with a brief in games. And in games you live more on an edge because if an idea of mine didn’t get bought in advertising, I still got paid by the agency… In games, you don’t get paid if your ideas don’t get picked up. But I actually prefer that; I’d rather live and die by my work.

And how did you make the transition into games, Steve?
In the early days of email, people used to get spammy emails – not with viruses and scams like now, just with stupid stories on them. I thought they were funny so I used to collect them. I didn’t know what I was doing with them, but I had a big folder of them. One day, I met a post-production company that had already produced a board game. I wondered if I could use this collection of crazy emails to create a board game to show to this company – which I did.

You just made up a game around spam emails?! What was it called?
Eeny Meeny Miny Moe! There was nothing remarkable about it but I pitched the idea, it got bought and it got sold. And I was fascinated by that – not least of all because it was made out of this collection of junk emails that I’d just picked up over two years. So that was my first ever game on shelf – it got sold at Sainsbury’s, I think.

That’s amazing! You just made this collection of nonsense… And that was your passport to a whole new life!
Yes. Ha! And I’ve no idea why… But, you know, being a creative, I was just… Things attract you and you’re fascinated by them. Then, my next thing was that I came up with the idea of playing games on DVD. Back in the ’80s, that was a massive idea. I pitched that to the same production company.

And at this point, you’re still in advertising?
Right. This was a nighttime thing… I said to them, “I’ve got this idea: can you play a board game on a DVD?” Well, obviously, that eventually turned into a massive phenomenon globally. But the production company asked me to go and work for them to develop the idea together. I figured I could go and do that for six months… If it didn’t work out, I could just go back advertising – so I took the leap, moved into games and absolutely loved it!

So how did you come to meet Snowy? Tell me about that dark and ruinous day…
Well – ha! By then, I was the Creative Director for Imagination Games in Australia; he was working for them in the UK. At the time, Imagination Games was a big organisation in a busy world, so he was just another person to work with. I think I only met him a couple of times. But people around the industry told me he was really good at what he did. Then DVD games started to die out, the world had a financial meltdown and the Imagination thing kind of imploded…

And that division of Imagination Games wasn’t small…
No, they had hundreds of people. It suddenly went down to about ten! And David and I were both out; we found ourselves trying to scrape a living. I started doing advertising again. But David rang me and asked if we should try something together. So we started literally with nothing but ideas… Which is what it always comes back down to. You need some ideas. You need some talk. You need something to show!

Well, let’s talk about that because you said three words together earlier that intrigued me: “being a creative”. From that, one could infer that you’re naturally creative… But some people would say, “Everybody’s capable of being creative!” – it’s just they don’t ever exercise that muscle; they don’t learn those skills. Where are you on that?
Good question… I think everyone’s creative, probably. But look… I’m shit at most other things in my life. Ha! I can’t read documents, for example; I’m terrible at that sort of thing – I am absolutely dyslexic. I got kicked out of school with next to no qualifications… Rubbish at everything! But I have a very creative mind that just allows me to see things in a different way.

Fortunately, I managed to make a career out of that: first in advertising, then in games. So while everyone can be creative, I do believe that doing it every day, on demand, five days a week, to a brief and over a period of time trains your brain to be better at it… When you’re forced to do it, you that hones the skills you’ve got.

Perfect. Now, one of the things I’ve always admired about The Fantastic Factory is your packaging. I’m picturing Stupid Deaths, for example, which comes in a box shaped like a gravestone. It’s an incredible bit of design! How important is it to have packaging that pops in that way?
Oh, immensely. It’s not always possible to do, but it comes from wanting to change things; not wanting to be like everyone else. But after having the idea of putting a curve on the top of a box, say, there’re so many obstacles that could stop you doing it. Sometimes you just can’t afford to do that extra idea, or it’s not technically possible or whatever. But yes – it’s something we strive for…

Why’s it so important?
Advertising taught me to strip stuff away from communications; to make them clear and simple and precise. So with an outdoor poster, say, you’d have a maximum of four or five words because it has to have an instant ‘get’! You can’t have the headline, the subhead, the picture of the product and loads of other things – it just gets lost. You have to strip things out so that you’re left with the simplest form of communication… With Stupid Deaths, making the box grave shaped IS the simplest form of communication. It looks like a gravestone on the shelf… It’s got the word ‘death’ on it! You already get the vibe.

Yes, you can just glance at the box and get the sense.. And even if people don’t understand the whole game, they still want to pick it up!
Right. And that’s important because you can’t do everything on the front of the box… You can’t communicate all the information. You need people to pick up the box, turn it round and find out more about what the content is or how the game works. If you can do that, great! It’s off the shelf, it’s in their hands and they’re reading more detail. That’s 50% of the battle!

Excellent. And is it the case that – if you had an idea for some sensational packaging – you and Snowy could conceivably create a game just to go in that packaging?
Absolutely. I reverse engineer as much shit as I can! Ha! Because if my job’s to come up with an idea, or come up with a packaging design, sitting at a desk makes it ten times harder – and ten times more boring… Whereas, if I’m out in the world and I see an interesting piece of packaging in another industry, that might spark something. That’s totally how I work. I mean… I CAN sit at a desk all day and google all day long, but there’s nothing like finding something in the real world.

You say “finding”…
Finding something, hearing something… Seeing or smelling something, or touching something – they’re all more likely to spark a reaction that could, in some sense, be almost as important as the idea for an actual game. So I might see – I don’t know – a bendy foam swimming-pool stick, say, and it might click in my brain as an a outdoor water game… Or I might see a box with a particular feature on it and think it’d be great for a board game. I literally work any which way I can that way round because it generates more interesting content.

And is that a conscious process? Are you walking around asking yourself, “How does this relate to games?” Or do you do that almost entirely out of habit?
I think it’s habit now because thinking like that becomes more second nature if you do it for long enough and can get paid for doing it. You have ideas as you travel, move around, look about, shop… It’s not like I go into every shop looking for things! But if something catches my eye, there’s often a reason behind it – and it’ll probably catch someone else’s eye too.

Of which, you have some outstanding packaging in one of your upcoming games… It’s shaped like a cartoon ghost: Ghost Letters! How did that come about?
I can’t remember quite how that came about! I think we had the sense of a game: a word game involving missing letters. At some point, the term ghosting came up – like when people ghost each other; they pretend they’re not there. I think that term kind of converged with the missing letters to become ghost letters. Once that came together, it quickly became the theme.

I’ll put a photo in here so people know what we’re talking about… It’s just fantastic design – instantly recognisable as a cartoon ghost a kid might draw…
Right. Then we asked if there was anything else we could add and – as you saw – we put a large pair of large googly eyes on the box. Now, when you pick it up, it moves; it’s got a bit of life. And – as we were saying – if I’ve got the pack in my hand, I’m probably going to turn it over to see the back of the box. So again, we’ve hopefully got people 50% of the way there by picking up the box.

It’s a great example! A game about missing letters doesn’t have much of a visual hook… But as soon as you start saying “ghost letters”, it helps the theme, it helps the packaging, it helps the sales pitch…
Right – and it’s the ghosting element that buyers understand. That’s very important. It has to be relatable to that generation: it’s very hard to grab and hold their attention. It really helps if you can talk in language they immediately understand. Ghosting is part of that language.

Brilliant job! Alright, last question, Steve. And – you know – I’ve just got a feeling you’re going to throw me a curveball… What’s the most interesting object in your office or on your desk?
Well… I’m not at my desk at the moment, so I’m just trying to think. You know, it’s one of those things… I actually don’t have a lot of things on my desk. I have a very plain and quite boring office, really… Now that I think about it, the whole office is quite austere. If you looked at it, you’d think I was an accountant. I just don’t have a lot of stuff…

Wow! It’s the weirdest thing: I just knew that was going to be your answer. I feel like Derren Brown! All right, let’s wrap it up on that strange but fascinating note… Thank you for joining me, Steve.

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