Exploding Kittens’ Ian Clayman on translating the alliances, betrayals and social gymnastics of Survivor into a card game

Ian, thanks for making time. Let’s start at the beginning – how did you get into game design? Was it always the plan?
It wasn’t actually. When I was a kid I wanted to be an architect. That was the plan for a long time up until about the sophomore year of high school, when a friend introduced me to Doctor Who of all things. I saw the TARDIS for the first time and the concept of a space that breaks all established laws of physics – and lets you be creative – got me excited.

I should say that for anyone new to Who, the TARDIS is a time machine that appears bigger on the inside than it is on the outside. I can see how it would spark the imagination!
Exactly. I kind of went down a rabbit hole online and found people who’d created mock-ups of the TARDIS or digital walkable experiences using video game engines… I just sort of turned around the next day and went: ‘Well, I’ve always played games, but I never really thought about the fact there are people who make them!’ I thought, if I go into architecture, I’m bound by laws that have been imposed upon me by the universe. If I go into games, I can create the laws and the rules that I want people to experience.

So it was spurred by the idea of greater creative freedom in game design than in architecture?
Yes, and that’s been the trajectory ever since.

Amazing. And when it comes to your role as Senior Game Designer at Exploding Kittens, what usually kicks off the development process on one of your games?
We’re really driven by our mission statement – we don’t make games that are fun, we make games that make the people you’re playing with fun. That’s the guiding light that kickstarts every conversation we have. How do we get our players to interact? How do we create moments between players, rather than moments of ‘player versus game’?

Then it’s about finding novelty in our concepts. Over the years, we’ve found that mass market players really like the foundation of familiar play patterns, but with an unexpected twist. It’s the MAYA principle in action – Most Advanced Yet Acceptable.

You’ve been with the company for close to five years. Has the company’s approach to design changed much in that time?
The ethos is the same and we still have that start-up mentality. We like to go fast, break things and challenge ourselves. And everyone here still wears a number of different hats… Game designers will do early art passes on concepts… Artists will pitch game mechanics to us… Accountants will come up with ideas for marketing… We like to have the whole team involved.

The biggest thing that’s changed is the number of opportunities that we have now. We did a Minions version of Exploding Kittens a few years ago. More recently we’ve done Survivor: The Tribe Has Spoken. We’re able to work on projects for properties we’ve always been fans of. Before, we’d have said: ‘Hey, wouldn’t it be cool if…’ But now we are established enough to make that a reality.

Speaking of Survivor, let’s dive into the game. How did this opportunity come about?
The project was driven by a relationship. Jeff Probst – the host and producer on the show – and Elan Lee, our CEO, have been friends for about 10 years now; almost as long as the company has been around. Elan has actually done some work on the show – he helped craft the auction system in Survivor season 45.

So they met, hit it off and then Jeff had this idea to work on another Survivor game. There have been Survivor games in the past, but none that he has been as integrally involved in from the ground up. The first person he approached about it was Elan, because they had that relationship.

What aspects of the show was important to faithfully capture in this game?
There’s so many elements of the show that a super fan can point to as being critical. You’ve got the actual survival element – having to live and thrive on this island. You have these crazy obstacle courses and physical challenges that Jeff and his team put together every season. The thing that really excited us when we took a wider view of what the layperson thinks when they think of Survivor was the social dynamics. The alliances, the betrayals, the secret reveals, the hidden immunity idols… Our focus was on recreating those juicy moments of tension.

Some of that builds over an entire season of the show. How did you tackle doing that in a shorter timeframe for a board game?
The biggest part of that for us was the voting system we designed.

In the show, Jeff calls a tribal council at sundown. Everyone shows up and there’s some conversation that he guides, where he pulls at the threads of weaker alliances – really pitting people against each other. Then everyone goes off one by one into a separate room. They talk into the camera, write down the name of the person they want to vote out and put it in this voting urn. Then Jeff comes back, opens it up and reads them out one at a time – building that tension. For several reasons, we knew we couldn’t mimic that exact system.

Yeah – great for TV, but not easy to replicate live around the table!
What we came up with was to use the box as a game component. So, the bottom half of the box has six colour-coded cubbies built into it, one for each player. Rather than you writing down the name of the player you want to vote out, everyone has a generic vote card. Then all players, except one, close their eyes. The player with their eyes open takes their vote card and puts it in the slot of the player they’d like to vote out. They then pass the box to the left, close their eyes, tap the next player on the shoulder, and you go around the table.

That was best way we could recreate that feeling of the hidden vote without needing to ship giant markers and a ceramic urn!

Seems like a smart solution! And you mentioned earlier that Jeff was very involved in the design process?
Yes, that wasn’t just marketing speak – Jeff was essentially a full-time member of our development team for the duration of the process. He sat in on brainstorming meetings and was part of the playtesting effort.

When we had the very first playable prototype, we brought it over to his house to play with him so that we could get his early feedback. Jeff is the ultimate encyclopaedia of Survivor knowledge, so we spoke about the touchstones that super fans would expect to see in the game. One result of that is that in the game, you’re playing as two previous contestants. It essentially gives players two lives before they’re knocked out of the game completely. And all of the contestants are people who have been on the show across the past 46 seasons – older contestants, younger contestants, original era, new era… Jeff was the guiding light in terms of deciding which 12 people best represent all different elements of the show.

Also, he’s a really canny game designer in his own right, especially when it comes to social dynamics and social engineering. He knows how to pit players against each other and how to create moments of conflict and tension. It was amazing to have his expertise in the room.

Terrific! And was it nerve-wracking pitching that first version of the game to him?
Jeff is one of the nicest people I have ever met. What you see on camera is not put on. He is genuinely that excitable. And he loves the show and its fans. And yes, it was incredibly stressful! Anytime you put an early prototype out into the wild, it’s always a little bit stressful. Putting a prototype out in front of the guy who kind of is Survivor… Well, multiply that feeling by a thousand!

Ha! Well, it all went well! You mentioned having done a Minions version of Exploding Kittens – and now Survivor. What makes a brand attractive to Exploding Kittens? Because Exploding Kittens itself has a very strong brand identity.
There’s two ways we look at it. One of them is looking at what feels like a fit for our humour and our art style – that classic Oatmeal webcomic look. In the case of Survivor, the big draw was play-pattern and player interaction. We really felt like the player versus player mentality of the show melded well with the type of player-to-player interaction we want to highlight in our games. It felt natural to apply the Exploding Kittens game design ethos to that setting.

The mass market now has plenty of hidden role games, many of which feature mechanics that may have lived purely in the hobby space 10 years ago. Do you think shows like Survivor and The Traitors have helped make what was perceived as a ‘tabletop mechanic’ more approachable?
I certainly think that’s part of it. I also think, frankly, that mass market players are savvier than we often give them credit for. The only thing that’s held back mass market players from some of those crunchier mechanics is simply the presentation.

At Exploding Kittens, we don’t say ‘Well, we can’t do this because our players won’t get it’. We prefer to say: ‘We want to do this. How do we present it in such a way that it’s simple to understand.’ We want it to be like you’re remembering something you already knew. A big part of our instructions writing process is about presenting things simply and straightforwardly. We’ve always shipped our games with how to play videos. We trust that if we present the information in the best possible way, players will just get it.

Before we wrap up, what do you think is Exploding Kittens’ most underrated game?
It happens to be a game that I pitched and was the lead designer on!

Ha! Go on…
It’s a game I still have a soft spot for, called Danger Danger. It’s essentially a bank heist presented as card game. I was on a flight to my uncle’s wedding and I decided to binge all of the Ocean’s Eleven movies. I was in the middle of Ocean’s Thirteen and I thought: ‘I bet you can create this feeling of tension, high stakes and kind of freeform jazz as a card game.’

How does it play?
Well, it went through a lot of evolutions, but the thing that was in there from day was this idea of a hidden timer. So, it’s you and your team against another team on the other side of the table. There’re piles of cards in the middle of the table and as long as one of your team’s cards is topping a pile, you score that pile. The catch is that at the start of each round, you set a 60 second timer on your phone and then you flip that face down.

So you don’t know exactly when the 60 seconds are up?
Exactly! And to score for the round, you and your team have to ‘get out’ – basically stop playing – before that timer goes off. So it’s essentially a game of chicken between your team and other team, against a timer that will bust everybody if you’re too greedy. It creates this great madcap moment where you’re watching the other team, you have four piles, they have five piles and it’s like: ‘Well, we need to take care of that pile… But if we take too long, we’re going to lose anyway… Do we get out now and hope that they don’t get out in time? Or do we push for it?’

Sounds brilliant! And what helps you have ideas for games – aside from the Ocean’s 11 franchise?
I pretty much always carry a top opening reporter-style notepad. It fits in my back pocket and it’s great for jotting down ideas. I still prefer pen and paper over computers when it comes to taking notes. It’s nice and tactile, and means I have a drawer full of old ones that I can refer back to.

Away from practicalities, as far as techniques go, there’s two things I like to focus on – genres and toolkits. I like to approach a new idea by saying: ‘I want to build a social deduction game’ or ‘I want to build a press-your-luck game’. I find that locking in expectations early helps centre me through the process, instead of just throwing everything at the wall and seeing what sticks.

And toolkits?
I like to think about my games as building a curated set of tools, handing them over to the player and giving them a vague direction as to the types of things they can build themselves. If they are empowered to make their own experiences, they’re playing a new game every time they sit down… It’s going to be informed by luck of the draw, the people they’re playing with, picking something up they missed on a previous playthrough. It’s really that idea of empowering your players – and leaning into the chaos a little bit. I don’t think of our games as closed ecosystems, but open opportunities for players to create for themselves.

Great answer. Ian, this has been fun! Thanks again and congrats on the launch of Survivor.

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