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The Wilmot Special: SU&SD Newsletter #83
🕑 Added 2024-08-21 21:34:15 +0000 UTC
This newsletter can also be consumed in an audio format further up the page.
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Before anything else, a massive thank you to each and every one of you reading this, new and longstanding. We could not do what we do without you and we are beyond immensely grateful to you all for being here.
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A few weeks ago we announced our involvement with Wilmot’s Warehouse - a board game based on a video game that the whole team loved - it’s absolutely fantastic. In today’s newsletter I’m going to take you behind the scenes, dragging you behind the curtains for some Wizard of Oz style TRUTH. If you don’t care about the business & emotional insights, just scroll down to the appropriate header!
Collaborations are really helpful for us, at Shut Up & Sit Down. Firstly let’s be honest and blunt: the make us a bit of money - we need that stuff to buy FOOD that we EAT. We're hugely reliant on donations from viewers, but we don't want to be only reliant on it. We'd feel icky and awful with trying to use that kind of emotional leverage!
The other key rule for all SU&SD collaborations is that we have to be putting something cool into the world - not simply something that people might want. And a big part of that comes down to us injecting a little bit of our spirit into these projects: putting a taste of what people love about our videos into an actual product that exists in the world.
Finally though, we have to want to do it: It's so important to allow the whole team to stretch different creative muscles, and work alongside talented people with different skills. We already love the jobs that we have, so anything that takes us away from that work has to be equally special!
Before I get into the weeds of Wilmot - I think that last part is really tricky to communicate to folks who watch our videos? I think partly this comes down to the current media landscape: paid-for content and advertisements are so commonplace that people presumed - perhaps reasonably! - that we’d simply taken money to promote a board game.
Unfortunately this also erases the fact that for the past few months I’d been working on the game, leaving some folks - again, I think reasonably - assuming that I’d lazily done little more that month than an advert.
Ironically this means that because people think we’re being cynical and grabbing easy money, it does directly impact our donations. Again though, for the hat-trick of “maybe that’s reasonable?” - I honestly think that the collaborations we do are just another way of us bringing more new people into the hobby, but I can also see that for people who just want podcasts and videos, these are explicitly NOT ‘just podcasts and videos’.
Honestly though, it’s tougher for me to really see the difference? I take great pleasure in putting care and love into work that makes people think, work that brings people joy, and work that makes people laugh. It isn’t ideal that with this medium the final product costs additional money, but on the other hand we’re actually making something that’s real rather than the ephemeral: it's far harder to bury a physical box than it is for YouTube's algorithm to bury a video.
This audience Perception VS Reality problem isn’t new, but it’s definitely getting worse: I think it comes down to broader consumer expectations about how YouTube channels work? The current media landscape really doesn’t do SU&SD any favours - but perhaps that’s a future newsletter in itself!
I DON’T CARE ABOUT BORING STUFF I WANT FUN STUFF, PLEASE
WHOA, OK - so first of all, good gravy, it was a beautiful and satisfying thing to be able to squish together two creative teams of this calibre. We’re no strangers to gushing over the work of CMYK - which is why we frequently also choose to work with them - and the same thing is true of video game studio Hollow Ponds and the artist Dick Hogg, who came to me a couple of years ago with a prototype for a Wilmot’s Warehouse board game designed by their friend David King.
Honestly, if it hadn’t been presented to me by people that I trusted - and if it wasn’t an adaptation of a videogame that I deeply loved - I might never have played this game.
And that is UPSETTING. We decided it might be a bit too negative and aggressive a sentiment to include in the introduction to the video I made announcing the game, but gosh - I hate memory games. I hate them! My flavour of brain makes them feel like the worst kind of work: repeatedly chastising me for failing to do something that I know I can't do.
The other thing I broadly tend to dislike? Twee cooperative games that have very low stakes. Give me drama! Give me spice! To this day I still harbour an irrationally strong disdain for the card game Hanabi - a nice game where you all work together to make a pretty fireworks show. What on earth is my problem with it, exactly? I don’t know! But I do not LIKE IT, and for that I am SORRY.
So I was taken aback when this co-operative memory game - something that sounds like my idea of hell - turned out to be something I really LIKED? What?! How?
And from my perspective that question - and the fact that I don’t really have a clear answer to it - has been the most difficult aspect of working on this game. I kept getting so swept up in my excitement that I’d then become deflated upon remembering that getting this gorgeous thing out into the world relied on me first having to successfully pitch… a light-weight co-operative memory game. It’s a bit like one of those dreams, where you’re giving a speech naked?
Thankfully GOOD GOSH, we knew this game was brilliant? And that’s partly because we’d kept an eye on it throughout the development process, making sure that it would evolve into a final product that SU&SD would entirely recommend.
In the earlier days, that meant making tweaks to the rules of the game. Originally the tiles were designed to be stored together as different sets - so you’d have a set group of product tiles paired up with their matching customer cards, and at the start of each game you’d mix up a bunch of these different sets from the box to create different combinations of tiles each game, but organized in a way that didn’t make it an absolute nightmare to sift through and find all the customer cards to match them.
There were some interesting benefits to this system! Firstly, you could be a bit more considered about engineering scaling difficulties: maybe some sets of tiles could be more abstract, or just irritatingly similar. Knowing that whenever X tile is in play, tile Y would be coming up TOO could be really fun for developing silly meta-games, or just gently irritating players in a way that they enjoy. Using sets of tiles could also be a fun opportunity for a box that contained lots of smaller boxes! It doesn’t get much more WAREHOUSE than that?!
Overall though - and I hope nobody will be offended by this! - it wasn’t a great idea. As people who spend way too long setting up board games and putting them away, we couldn’t imagine a way this would work without it being a real pain in the bum. Possibly the biggest impact we had on the design of this game was our very first suggestion: just use all of the customer cards, in every game?
It fit with the theme, making customers a little bit more annoying: "we haven't even got that!"- and it also helped to amplify the finale of the game: rather than a straight-up memory puzzle of matching 36 icons to 36 cards, this change to the game meant it soon evolved into a frantic and messy free-for-all that contrasted really nicely with the careful and pensive way that you'd slowly fill the warehouse.
Not all of the ideas and insights that we offered to the team were useful, though! A big thing all parties were aligned with was keeping the box small and simple - and for a little while I became fixated about whether or not we could remove the game’s board? (To be fair, in an earlier version of the game it was much bigger.)
Removing the whole dang BOARD from the game would make the box even smaller - but without the structure of the square grid it really lost something. I toyed around with the idea of just using modular outer walls that could maybe even be added throughout the game - potentially creating warehouses of different shapes? - but this ended up being a personal brain-adventure that we slid into the bin: once we had a smaller, sharpened-up version of the warehouse board? It kind of just felt right.
It still blows my mind that - for such a colourful and bright game - the majority of the time you’re playing, the entire board state is just black and white? I think everyone involved went through a process of wondering if that was a terrible idea, but Hogg’s sharp graphic design combined with CMYK’s expert production really nails the landing - after a certain point we all stopped questioning it.
Delicious little hypocrite that I am, shortly after looking for things we could remove from the box, I obviously started suggesting new things that we might add back into it. Fictional business cards, paper contracts - and the silliest idea of the all: The Lanyard of Disappointment. We really did seriously toy with the idea of shipping the game with an actual lanyard that players could wear if they'd messed something up. It didn't make the cut for a number of good reasons, but did make an appearance of sorts within the game.
One of the earlier ideas I fell in love with was the inside of the box being a loading bay of sorts, with tiles all stored in rectangular tuck-boxes that would look like trucks. And the small cards did end up in a mini truck box, and I absolutely love it.
To me - as a fan - it felt vital that we had SOME physical form of Wilmot, somewhere in the box. But as it panned out, that was hard to justify? Doing that in a prominent way would have required that we then fully explain to new players who Wilmot is.
And then after we’d introduced Wilmot, he isn’t really in the board game? His absence from the box would have been unthinkable, but his inclusion could have easily been a pointless gimmick. I can’t take any credit for the idea of the bag for the tiles having Wilmot’s face on it, but gosh - what a solution - an absolute delight.
This puzzle of explaining “Wilmot” to a wider audience stretched out beyond just the beloved white square, too. A lot of the tonality and story within the video game is really subtle, mostly light-touch satire with a minimal cast of characters - most of whom are just inanimate shapes with faces?
Even your employer purposefully lacks detail: A5 Logistics is between Daventry and Hinkley, named after the motorway their company sits in the middle of. That's it - that's all of the lore.
The game mostly communicated its character through this mundanity - the only real interaction you have with your employer is getting posters about workplace safety as a reward for doing a great job. You never go home, you never leave the warehouse - you just organize colourful things in a way that makes sense to you, existing pretty much alone in a massive, dark, empty space.
It sounds bleak, but it isn’t! The joy of Wilmot’s Warehouse is that it isn’t a real job - it’s a game. And it doesn’t matter that you aren’t getting great rewards from your boss, because genuinely the job itself is the reward. So your relationship with your manager CJ - and A5 Logistics - is kind of just an amusing little sideshow: the beige mundanity of corporate structures, the occasional thumbs-up and an insincere smile from a system that doesn't really know what you do on a day-to-day basis.
The original video game has plenty of time to flesh things out, but translating this tone to the board game was complicated: an emphasis on mundanity could easily just come across as boring, but we also didn't want to lean too heavily into the realm of corporate satire - it just didn't feel like it fit Wilmot's world? It was important that A5 Logistics felt cold, detached, just a little bit crappy - the evil corporation angle felt too played out, and just didn’t fit the spirit of Wilmot’s Warehouse.
And that might sound obvious, but gosh it’s tough to walk that line when you’re trying to inject all of this theme and narrative into a manual that’s being edited by CMYK. Good gravy, those things are tight - aside from a few points on which I championed the additional words for the purposes of a useful joke, most of the stupid stuff I was going to add in ended up elsewhere - in the silly end of game scoring videos.
Honestly, the majority of the work that SU&SD did on the game, behind the scenes, was focused on working alongside the theme - getting that tone right. I really like the puzzle of work like this - looking for ways to make games more interesting or immersive or fun, but without really changing anything? It’s so satisfying!
It’s amazing how much you can add with the tiniest of motions, here and there - framing the current player as the “shift supervisor” is a fun little power trip that costs nothing: telling a player that "they have to go first" might seem daunting, but telling them that they're the BOSS? They’re in CHARGE? That’s just cool! Kids in particular - for obvious reasons - love it.
This was something I really noticed when I first played Sheriff of Nottingham, and I think it’s a great tool for counteracting the trepidation that some people have when first playing board games. Nobody wants to look stupid, or like they’re getting things wrong - but when you’re THE BOSS, it’s culturally accepted that you can’t be openly accused of either. In the real world, that’s not great - but it is what it is, so let’s harness it for the purposes of FUN.
On the flipside of this culturally accepted framework, anyone who’s ever worked a job is very very aware that the people in charge are often absolute idiots. Originally framed as just being additional instructions from head office, I’m really glad we ended up framing the silly extra instructions you get throughout the game as being “Mandatory Ideas”.
I think the tonal disconnect between those two words is a great example of the ways in which rigid power structures try so hard to pretend that they aren’t, but I also think it’s just directly relatable for most people in a way that’s quite funny: working under management of any kind, really, means often being subject to the temporary whims and bad ideas of someone in an office somewhere that you've never met.
While I definitely had a hand in some of the sillier Mandatory Idea Cards, the majority came from the main development team - undergoing many stages of playtesting. But one of our jobs was giving all of these cards titles, and it honestly might have been my favourite job?
Another inspiration here, weirdly, was Gloomhaven: the way it vividly brought scenarios to life just by giving each action card a perfectly evocative title - it showed me that just a few carefully chosen words could do so much heavy lifting. Here though, obviously, I wasn't trying to conjure up aesthetically rich combat set-pieces - but I still tried to use the same principle.
For some, we kept the card names really functional - just to keep things simple, to ensure the game flowed. But I had a ton of fun here thinking up ways that just a few words could add an extra dollop of context to the instructions on these cards, or make a relatable gag about the workplace, or even just flesh out the game’s world a little bit. Just like with REAL jobs, we didn’t want players to start out with the explicit knowledge that A5 Logistics was a crap company to work for, it was really fun to just seed tiny details throughout the manual and the cards - letting players paint their own picture over time, and develop their own meta-jokes and narrative as a part of that, if they wanted to.
It was really important to the whole team that we kept the cynical, more satirical side of the game feeling completely optional - if players wanted to lean into that side of things, we provided all of the necessary winks and nudges. Equally though, there’s nothing baked into the rules that’s overtly mean or pointed - even the Mandatory Ideas from headquarters can be ignored without consequence.
But as you might expect, a lot of the work that SU&SD did on this project came down to making videos - and aside from the custom-made pixellated X-Ray Dither effect I cooked up for explaining how the game worked (good gravy Davinci Resolve’s Fusion page is an infinite cave of delights) - the hardest part of this work for me was the final end-of game scoring videos.
On the back of the game’s manual, the idea was that we’d have all these different QR codes that would link to short corporate videos - just a small optional dessert to cap the game off. It was my idea, and I wasn’t worried about being able to do it - UNTIL it came to actually planning and scripting them.
Honestly? Terrifying. I wanted these videos to make people laugh, but they also had to be a really clear representation of the world of Wilmot’s Warehouse. And that world didn’t have any HUMANS in it!? It felt like a ton of pressure, honestly, even though I don’t think that’s something I’ve expressed to anyone, anywhere, up until now.
Thankfully I think that crippling fear led to me really putting an awful lot of thought in. I’ve done so much faux 1980’s VHS stuff at this point that I didn’t want to lean on that angle - so it was fun to find an aesthetic that felt gently faded but also visually sharp - an anachronistic blend of juicy retro fuzz & the sharp modern lines of the original game.
Some of those videos skirt along a fine line, if I’m honest - there are implications that are gently grim, some real awful corporate nonsense peeking out from beneath the silly comedy. And just like with the rest of the game, you can focus on that darkness - or you can just skim over that, and have fun.
I decided that I wanted these videos to be - above all else - ludicrous - because that’s the word that I would use to describe most of my interactions with the corporate world!
When I look back on those times though, I recall the frustrations of pointless instructions and irritating managers, but mainly I remember still finding such fun in spite of all: I remember feeling like I had a choice - I could either let my cynicism ferment into misery, or I could choose to treat it all as some huge, stupid joke - laughing and rebelling against these systems whilst finding better ways to enjoy the work I did, in solidarity with my colleagues.
And for me that’s what Wilmot’s Warehouse is all about: it doesn't matter that your bosses are cynical and make terrible decisions, because you're still given the choice to simply laugh at the ludicrous machinations of management, and instead find joy and solidarity in THE WORK and that feeling of working as a TEAM.
So err, that’s why those videos were really silly, and I pretended to be a slightly annoying grinny little berk?! ANYWAY - that’s probably enough giganto-rambling for now. What a pleasure to get to work alongside such talented people on such a wonderful thing. It’s still early days, but it seems like reviewers have been really enjoying the game, and I hope that if you’re reading this you’ll sometime try and get the chance to have a play of it yourself!
What are we video games! 🎮
Tom: Cataclismo was a real highlight for me this month - a tower defence game and a city builder rolled into one neat little package. There’s something intensely satisfying about the ‘block-by-block’ building - it keeps you determined to make intricate, layered defences that look just as sturdy as they functionally are. It’s superbly realised already, and I’ve blasted through what’s available in early access ahead of the 1.0 release sometime down the line.
I’ve also been smitten with the cosy delights of Horticular - a digital garden where you commandeer a cluster of gnomes into restoring a patch of wasteland. The crux of the game is in the ‘habitats’ system - figuring out what certain creatures get a kick out of, and populating your garden accordingly. Often, though, part of a habitat might be the presence of another creature - requiring you to layer up your dwellings strategically to “maximise bumblebee coverage”. It’s nice. It’s gentle. It’s got lovely sounds and attention to detail in the pop and spring of menus. I’m a fan of those gnomes.
What are we music! 🎵
Tom: It’s been a strangely disappointing month in music, for me. Wand’s latest record, Vertigo, felt a little flat and meandering in comparison to the peaks of Laughing Matter, Plum, and Hanson’s solo output. Aside from the blisteringly bittersweet lead single ‘Smile’ and the extended fuzzed-out jam that closes ‘High Time’, I felt little reason to come back for seconds!
To chase that, a weirder feeling. Los Campesinos released their first new album in seven years; ‘All Hell’. My cupboard is rammed with Los Campesinos merch accrued over more than a decade of seeing them live, inhaling their albums, peppering their lyrics and turns of phrase into every other video I’ve made for the site. I just cannot get into their new material.
I think there’s a couple factors at play. The first is in the record itself. Gareth’s previously abrasive and yelping vocals have been swapped out for a far smoother tone; he sings far more on this record than any other, and it detracts immensely from the character of the music I’ve loved for so long. The production is smoother, cleaner - ‘better’ across so many practical axes… but safer, more tepid as a result.
That’s paired with a fanbase skewing younger - their resurgence is in part due to popular young streamers and influencers promoting their music to the audience it was always intended for - teens, students, the otherwise angsty and sexually frustrated. I’m slowly beginning to feel out of place at their gigs, and ever more at odds with the contents of the songs I know so well. When I saw them last I felt like it might be the last time! Their fans are younger than ever and I feel older than ever.
I feel certainly a little bittersweet about this, though it’s not as if I’m swearing off the band entirely after one duff album (that in truth, is only duff to my tired ears). How could I? They were so deeply instrumental in my teenage years, in pulling me through all kinds of emotional turbulence. I don’t think I’ll ever tire of the monstrous opening run of NO BLUES, or belting ‘Straight In At 101’ in the shower, or watching their crowds go absolutely buckwild for the climax of ‘Miserabilia’.
In writing this I may have convinced myself to not let that last gig be the last, for me. The crowds at their shows are so joyous and communal, so honest in what they owe to the band, so generous with their love as each lyric is chanted back as loud as they can muster with their whole damn body. I think their music especially (but also music as a whole, in a way) belongs to teenagers, and I might just be better served soaking in that catharsis from the sidelines. The music’s changed but the feeling stays the same. What a rare and wondrous creation.
What are we watching? 📺
Tom: I’ve been watching The Prisoner, after seeing one of my favourite Youtubers - Leo Vader - upload a nearly two hour video on the thing. It’s a weird way to go about it; watching seventeen hours of television to prepare for a two hour video, but so far I’m having a grand time. It’s playful, characterful television with real flair in expressing the surreal ends of its setting. One of the episodes is basically Inception, but it was made in 1967? A lovely treat to sit down to every evening.
Comments
Ethan Glasser-Camp
Is there a typo in "only reliant on d feel icky and awful with trying to use that kind of emotional leverage! "?
Shut Up & Sit Down
It's back next week! Just had a small summer break for it.
Jon Hartley
Sad to see no mention of the podcast. Happy that you guys are excited about what you're working on, though!
