An Interview with Zev Shlasinger

Zev Shlasinger is one of the biggest names in board gaming, yet you won’t find his name on any game box. Well, technically. Because you’ll certainly find his company’s name on a quite frankly huge catalogue of games, from huge hits like Pandemic, Carcassonne and Agricola, to niche heavy euros like Russian Railroads to light card games like Arboretum. Zev was the founder of Z-Man games, now part of F2Z, and it’s his approach to choosing games that is responsible for Z-Man’s eclectic backlog

I would say honestly the success of the philosophy I had in bringing good, fun, different games [to the market]. I think that’s what I would point to as my biggest success.

Uniqueness, or a nice twist would be something that would get my attention.

When choosing games it’s always been about what he loves to play… but not quite always!

Most of the games I play, it’s pretty much I have to really like them to want to do it. And feel that they deserve to be out there in the market place, that people need to try.

There are games that I’ve definitely done, where I was like “Yeah, I don’t know about this.” Like you said, it’s not my type of game but I know others will like it. [For example,] the more dryer Euro games, where they’re not as exciting to me but I know people do love that and I did it for them.

There are also other games I did to establish relationships with publishers. So maybe I didn’t love the game, but you know what, I really want to work with this publisher, so I’ll do this in the hopes of future kindness.

Sometimes that means going against everyone else’s advice.

Actually, Pandemic would probably be up there because a lot of people said: “No one’s going to play a coop game. People hate coop games.” There were only a few in the marketplace.

A lot of people tried to talk me out of it. But I was like: no, this is a really good game. I’m going to do this.

I think we can all agree, that was probably a good call! Of course, for every success, there have been games that didn’t do as well as he hoped.

I would say the second printing of Ideology I thought would have done better, and hoped it would. Some of the older games that I had and that didn’t do as well as I thought, it’s hard to cite. I’m trying to envision my shelf and see which ones…Stock Market I was hoping could have done better, or Grimoire, so yeah, there are definitely games out there that I had high hopes for and I was surprised that they didn’t do as well as they did. But no game has absolutely failed me so I’m happy about that.

There are individual titles, the big hits, the disappointments. But really the important thing in any career is what brings you joy.

Honestly, I think seeing other people enjoy the games that I publish. That’s very satisfying. Seeing friends and families get together, talking about games, talking about the fun they had together. People tell me stories about that. I love that. That would be the biggest thing.

The other thing is the people that I’ve met in the industry and the places I’ve gone, all because of gaming. That’s been fantastic

In China I went to meet my printer – it was great, I had a translator with me and he showed me around. I met Chinese gamers, I went to game stores. I of course went sightseeing and it was great, but the fact of meeting all these people in my industry, but so far away from me and doing it in their own way. That was fantastic.

 He thinks China could soon to be a big growth area for the industry.

Their economy is getting to the point where they can possibly support getting board games as a normal thing. People are having money more. But back then when I went, and even earlier, it was very hard. A lot of the games were very cheap. And there were pirated copies as well of some games, but again you’re looking at very inexpensive games and that was the market. But I think it’s growing.

And that’s just as true for the industry as a whole.

I think we’re just going to grow. I think it will maybe become more mainstream in places where it’s not, which means growth. I think that’s what I’m going to see. Not meteoric rise, but a very nice steady growth of people gaming and hanging out together, families hanging out and playing together.

He doesn’t see the growth of large companies as a threat to smaller publishers ability to compete.

I think the barrier, especially if Kickstarter is going to stay around, to enter publishing is much lower – so I don’t think you will see that disappear. And this is such a hobby industry that I can’t imagine our industry would ever do that, because it’s always been on the backs of creative single entity thinkers. I think that will continue.

With the bigger companies, they’re going to want ‘bigger’ games. Things with bang, things they’ll probably sell licenses for, but also things where they’ll sell thousands and thousands and thousands [of copies] because otherwise it wouldn’t be worth their time. So you’ll still be content with the little guy who says “If I sell 500 copies – cool! I’ll do a small card game!” There will be areas where the bigger companies will not be interested in doing a particular game.

It was recently announced that Zev has left Z-Man to join board game company WizKids, publishers of the Marvel Dice Masters series, Mage Knight and the HeroClix game system.

I’m hoping to create a board game entity within WizKids that will rival any of the other board game [companies]. The main thing I want to do, much like the Z-man philosophy, is to come out with a catalogue of good, fun, unique games. But in this case some of it may be married to cool licenses, which is exciting.

WizKids already has some [licenses] – they have Marvel, DC, Star Trek and so on. So right there you can say “Hey, we need a Star Trek game” so let’s come up with an idea where it’s something for the hobby with the Star Trek license. So you can commission games that way. And then there are other games where we might say: “You know what? This might work with X license, do you think we can get that?”. Well, maybe we already have it! Or maybe we can talk about getting it.

I like the prospect that they’re willing to do it, and also that they have the capability to do that – get the licenses, and also may have the license already.

But Zev is still planning to produce games outside of licenses.

I’m not looking to primarily do licensed stuff. And I think they hired me to primarily look at good games. So I’m not trying to marry every game to a license – if it fits, then I don’t mind doing it. But I already have a few prototypes that are not going to go with any license that we have or want to pursue.

We should be seeing this new relationship bear fruit soon enough:

Since I just started and it’s not convention season, I really don’t have a lot of prototypes yet. But I’ve already commissioned on some licenses that we have. I would say if not by GenCon, maybe by Essen, we’ll have maybe the first one or two games that I either brought in or commissioned. Maybe earlier if I find a quicker game – card game or something simpler component-wise. I would say probably nothing before GenCon at this point. We’re already in March, so it’s going to be pushing it.

I think we’re planning on displaying at GenCon but we may be there just to have a presence and let people know. I don’t think we’re going full-blown yet with games to demo. But we’ll see. It’s also a learning process. I’m learning to work with them [WizKids], they’re learning to work with me. So there’s that as well. That honeymoon phase that we have to get over as well as seeking out new games and going through the whole ritual of how to get it done and get it to market. So it will be a while, but we already started moving, which is great.

These are exciting times for both Zev and WizKids and, I hope, for the rest of us too! Many thanks to Zev for taking the time to talk with me, and once again to Eclectic Games in Reading for hosting a great press day and Esdevium Games for inviting me along! You can read my other interview from that trip, with Pandemic designer Matt Leacock, here.