We build games that make the people you are playing with entertaining.” While Lee was chief design officer for Microsoft’s Xbox and created alternate reality games using multimedia, it’s an old school, analog approach that Exploding Kittens embraces with games like Throw Throw Burrito involving a Nerf-like foam burrito players lob at each other across a table.Īs Lee explains, the game is not about the game itself but rather about players interacting. To better appreciate Lee’s glee about such a quandary, it helps to know his background and the company’s philosophy about games. “Huge desire, big problem-that’s my favorite kind of situation,” he adds with a smile.Įxploding Kittens CEO and cofounder Elan Lee Maximilian Motel | Exploding Kittens “When I want steal a card, I can’t reach through the screen. Players draw new cards from a shared deck and steal cards right out of each other’s hands, two more dynamics meant for players gathered around a table, not for players located remotely. It’s essential to see opponents’ faces in real time in order to spot a “tell,” those facial tics that expose fear, a bluff, arrogance-and even reveal who’s holding the dreaded, game-losing “Exploding Kitten” card. The seemingly insurmountable challenge was to re-create in a virtual setting the face-to-face experience of card-playing and all the intrigue and suspense that goes along with that.

It was an impossible problem and all we were doing again and again is proving that, yes this is an impossible problem.” “Normally, when you fail at something, you learn a little bit.

“The first 10 days were so bizarre because it was all failure. “The full time frame was about two weeks,” he told me.

While game development cycles typically span six to 18 months, Lee says, the new game went from concept to release in record speed. It lines up nicely with what people are seeking right now, which is interaction. “You have to applaud the effort into brand-building. “This is a cool pivot even though they are not making money on it,” says Jay Dunn, CMO and partner at Chief Outsiders.

Blind as a bat exploding kittens