INTERVIEW: ‘MIND MGMT’ has been adapted into new board game
Image courtesy of Off the Page Games / Provided by Superfan Promotions with permission.
Fans of Matt Kindt’s MIND MGMT should rejoice because the hit comic series has been adapted into a board game, and there are only a few more hours to contribute to its successful Kickstarter campaign. The game, dubbed MIND MGMT: The Psychic Espionage Game, has a one-vs.-many narrative in which players become either agents of Mind Management, a secretive organization, or a bunch of rogue agents determined to decimate Mind Mgmt, according to press notes.
Off the Page Games, which developed the product, will include more than 80 pages of new MIND MGMT stories, all by Kindt, with the release. As of this writing, the Kickstarter campaign has already unlocked 19 stretch goals, so the game keeps getting better and broader with each passing hour.
Recently Hollywood Soapbox exchanged emails with Kindt about the new adaptation and the Kickstarter campaign. Questions and answers have been slightly edited for style.
How did this game project begin for you?
I was tagging along with a friend (Brian Hurtt) to GenCon — a board game convention. My plan was to just hang out in the hotel and write/work while he was signing/promoting an RPG (Sixth Gun) he was involved with. But I was curious. I had never been to any conventions other than comic book shows — so I took a stroll around the con floor just to check it out.
I couldn’t believe all of the amazing and creative games that were out there. It was an entire art form and industry that I had just never been exposed to. My brother had always twisted my arm to play Catan or something when I’d come over to visit. So I knew OF board games … but not to what extent they’d evolved.
The short version of this story is — I came home from that con with literally a trunk full of board games. And — during the convention I was introduced to Jay [Cormier] and Sen — who just happened to know who I was, and they were fans of MIND MGMT. I think I jokingly suggested we do a MIND MGMT board game sometime … and what started as a kind of flippant suggestion turned into the MIND MGMT board game.
I don’t think it could have happened without them really understanding what MIND MGMT [was] . Their understanding of what I was doing allowed them to really translate the mind-bending paranoia and subversive nature of the comics into a game that works independently of the comic books but also expands on the ideas in the comic if you’re already familiar with them.
Were you immediately convinced that MIND MGMT would work as a game?
Yeah — honestly — I think the book is already a kind of game, a kind of interactive narrative that includes the reader and pulls them in to be kind of complicit in the ideas that are going on in the story. So for me, it wasn’t a stretch to see how that might develop into an actual game. I had a lot of fun with the design of the game — not how it works — but the box and the art, and dressing this up as something that looks like a traditional board game. Yet we label it inconsistently — it’s a “game” on the cover of the box, but on the side and back it is labeled as an “agent testing kit.” For me the game is a great way to hook people into the ideas and the story … literally.
[Read Hollywood Soapbox’s previous interview with Matt Kindt here.]
Will there be new stories and characters in the game?
We’re drawing on existing characters from the books — and there are a few new ones. And as for story, yes, the way the game is structured it kind of unfolds the more you play it. There are these small boxes with extra game pieces, and each one has a mini-comic in it with a short story.
The story serves a dual purpose. It explains how the game is developing but is also stand-alone short story as well. It’s some of the trickiest stuff I’ve had to write because it has to both function and entertain. The hard part I think is going to be restraining yourself from just opening all the boxes right away and reading the comics — it works better if you play it and then read them!
What are you hoping to accomplish with the Kickstarter?
We really just wanted to get the game made. I’m learning about the board game industry and how it works. There are a lot of similarities between it and the comic book industry, and one thing the Kickstarter has allowed us to do is to make this game our way — exactly how we wanted it to be, no interference. It can be as crazy as our craziest idea. And some of them are out there.
We’ve designed a bunch of subliminal and hidden messages into the game — the cards, the pieces. There are things to discover in this game that you might not notice until you’ve played it 20 times … or just happen to put some random cards together in a special sequence and then finally notice what we’ve done. I like to call those ‘time bombs’ — they’re small pieces of story or content that you don’t notice right away. Maybe it’s a week or a month or you pull the game out a year later, and then it goes off. You notice something new. It’s something I planted in all of the books, and the game is just full of them.
What’s the future of MIND MGMT beyond this game?
I’ve written a pilot for Universal that everyone really likes, so we’re just trying to put it together and get it actually made … stay tuned! And there are plans for more comic books/graphic novels. It is all in the works — looking at 2021 probably.
By John Soltes / Publisher / John@HollywoodSoapbox.com
MIND MGMT: The Psychic Espionage Game is currently being promoted on Kickstarter. Click here for more information.
