Myke Doyle, in English

"(…) Another point to be made is that strong aesthetics reduces fatigue during downtime. If there's something pretty to look at, you're less likely to get as bored when waiting on slow players. If one is less bored, the experience will come across better in the end (…)."

Mike Doyle, 40 years old, married, two children. He runs a team of designers in the Big Apple and, in his free time, he creates, re-creates and plays board games. This designer who lives in the Garden State (New Jersey) and has no garden, advise us to listen Bebel Gilberto while playing Puerto Rico and Miles Davies with Traders of Genoa – "sweet and approachable, use this sedative to calm frayed nerves from tense negotiations in Traders of Genoa".

Brilliant, we could say that there's a before Mike Doyle and after Mike Doyle in board games. Some of the most terrific board game creations ever made were signed by him. He's a man from the planet board game who created a signature - a sober, wise brand of someone that can't be ignored.

We recognize success when we open the door of the greatest board game show of the world – Essen – and, although he was physically absent everything had his signature -"it was the year (2007) that I was really able to break through".

Games like El Capitán, Container, Demetra, Yspahan, Leonardo da Vinci, Hannibal and also the Portuguese successful Reiner Knizia's Modern Art (2006) built that. Every game is very important to achieve success and although his best work "is always what I'm currently doing because there is the possibility – and hopefully likelihood – that this will be better than the last thing I've done"; Caylus Premium Edition is the chosen one in order to represent this image.

About premium editions, Mike Doyle dreams about making a Puerto Rico in this format. Something that is "still in his head" and that he wants to do. It would be a simple "re-skinning rather than the single board that I once did. Nothing radical at all in terms of play but more executional on a high premium level"

Questions pump like mushrooms: What's the feeling of creating a game from scratch? And re-creating one? Is it the same or a different process?

Making a game from the very beginning, from the scratch, is not a simple task because "more thought is given at the start on board layout and how the components will interact. On the positive end, there are fewer preconceptions about how the game should be (most of the time), so it can be easier to sell an idea."

When talking about reprints, like most of Doyle's work, "anything out of bounds of this [look and feel] can be unexpected and make for a hard sell". With Titan, for example, some changes on the board were suggested but the publisher was afraid that players who already knew the game "would not accept them because it was not what they were used to."

With Container, creative work was very restrictive because the publisher had a very strong idea about how the game should look, in terms of the board and colors. Only cards and money were object of creativeness and so, working on Container was "mostly executional rather than creative".

Doyle keeps a critical spirit over everything, especially about his own work. El Capitán, for example, because the names on the cities were in a foreign language and their localization was not an easy task to the players, the board was designed in order to facilitate the overview in a 3x3 grid with different pictures on each single city and on the cards in order to facilitate comprehension. However, "I didn't make the pips big enough and didn't take into account being upside down facing the board. The production also printed darker than it should have which didn't help".

Other people could also criticize his work which is exposed to everybody who wants to see it in his great, unique, blog. Receiving the enthusiasm of those who love his work is something he appreciates, especially those who "take the time to personally write me".

Mike Doyle thinks that the general feeling of the industry, consumers included, about changes is very difficult to the ones who, like him, want to make things differently - "almost all board games look alike – they have the same style of illustration and the same formulaic application. Things that fall out of bounds of convention are often flatly rejected. This is not just board games but anything, really".

When talking about other authors, designers, no hesitation on picking Ystari's last game, Metropolys, a work done by Mathieu Leysenne "absolutely stunning" and also Shogun.

And what about the game he wanted the most to get published? "Boy, a hard question! It's like saying which child are you most eager to introduce to your friends. I love them all for different reasons. For Municipium I like the look of the board. For Supernova, I love its graphic beauty and its uniqueness in this category. For Titan and Battles of Napoleon, I love the richness of the programs."

From his "independent" productions, Samurai could be a good thing to work on – "I would be very interested in Samurai if someone were to pick that up".

Changes are expected in a very near future. The next project, which is still a secret, will reveal us a different Mike Doyle – a project for the Dutch publisher QWG with a "lighter board [which represents] a departure from my other works." Let's just wait and see!

We would like to thank Mike Doyle for the kindness he showed on this interview.

Sites:

http://mdoyle.blogspot.com/

http://mdoyle2.blogspot.com/

http://www.michaeldoyle.com/gameKultur.html

http://www.boardgamegeek.com/user/mikedoyle

http://www.boardgamegeek.com/thread/100097