December 5, 2008 — Interview with Randy Thompson, creator of
Soccer Tactics World (The Soccer Paper)
— By Lucas Teodoro da Silva

How did you get into board games?
RANDY THOMPSON: I was just working in the government in Victoria as an admin clerk and I had an eye injury and I lost my job because of it. When I was at home I couldn’t watch TV or do anything on computers anymore, so me and my kids started playing board games and stuff. It was like going back in time. Then one night I invented a basketball game. That was the first time I ever invented a board game…but it really took a long time. It took years to develop and market that basketball game because I had never done it before. When I was in Germany between 2004-2006, I started developing and marketing this soccer game.

What was the basketball game like?
RANDY THOMPSON: The name of the game was Crunchtime. It was funny because it was my first foray into games. You play Crunchtime going around the board almost like Monopoly, but I did Crunchtime with a basketball theme, and there was fast-paced action.

However, the soccer game [Soccer Tactics World] is really a lot like soccer, the beautiful game, but the basketball game is fast and frenetic like basketball.

How did you invent a board game?
RANDY THOMPSON: One night I was listening to a basketball game on the radio back when Vancouver had the Grizzlies and as I was listening to this game, I had an idea in mind and I drew it out on paper and brought it downstairs to show to the kids. It’s funny to think about that – how one little scrap of paper and then we went to cardboard drawings and stuff, and then I got a graphic artist to draw it out and everything and after years I got a sample done and everyone was telling me it was really going to be a great game…I thought it was going to be a super game and, like I said, when I brought it to Germany and was marketing it and trying to sell this game, a lot of Germans were asking me about a football or soccer game and what happened was the basketball game led to the soccer game, and then the basketball game got put on the back-burner.

Are you a lifetime soccer fan or did you come to soccer because of board games?
RANDY THOMPSON: It’s really funny, but I am not a lifetime soccer fan. Growing up in Canada, I played hockey and football and baseball…all unorganized, just in our neighbourhood. When I went to Germany, as you know, when you hit Europe everything is soccer. I started watching a lot of soccer and at first I could see similarities between soccer and hockey.

Interesting, because the game is so much like real soccer and has so many of the little details, that you would assume a lifetime soccer fan had made it.
RANDY THOMPSON: We’ve had really serious football fans play it and they all think that I was a big football fan my whole life to create such a game, and sometimes I’m a bit shy about telling them that I’m a Canadian with not a very long soccer background.

If that was the case, did you have to learn a lot as you developed the game and look things up?
RANDY THOMPSON: Well, (when I was in Germany for a couple of years), I did become a big soccer fan, and now my favourite sport in the whole world is the beautiful game. I’m always looking the games up – the EPL games and I follow the World Cup and all the leagues in Germany. I have my favourites…I really like the Argentina style of soccer and the fast-flowing offence of Brazil and South America. Because I had a sports background it was easy to fall in love with soccer. Now I think the other games are not near as good.

The board game sort of looks a little like chess on a soccer field…were you influenced at all by chess?
RANDY THOMPSON: People see the 8 x 8 squares and it looks familiar, and we get that question a lot, “Is it like chess?” But right away I say, “Simplified chess.” I don’t want to make parents or kids feel like they can’t get it, like it’s complicated like chess. There are some elements of chess, but very very simplified.

As kids, a lot of us played board games we invented…either for school projects or just for something to do on a rainy day. However, as a board game inventor, after you’ve sketched a game onto a piece of paper, what’s the next step to get your game published?
RANDY THOMPSON: I always think you get an idea…and good ideas come from God, that’s what I think myself. Then, you make some rough drawings and you really have to think after you’ve invented something that it’s really important to check the marketplace. If there’s something like that already out there, then I wouldn’t put a lot of time into it. If there’s something really unique that could be good in the marketplace, then you need to test it a lot. That’s something I did with the basketball game and something I did with the soccer game. Test it with a lot of people, and make sure you’re getting honest feedback from people. You can test it with family and friends, but you better make sure they’re being honest with you. If it’s not good, they need to tell you and if there’s a part about it they don’t like, they better tell you. But if you’re starting to get a reaction from people you don’t even know and they’re saying, “I really like this,” then you probably know that you’ve got a good idea. Then you need to do what everybody else does when they have a good idea – find some financing and go through hoops from there to get your game published. You can have this great idea and have this great game but you still have to package it, you still have to have a nice box and things like that. So things like a graphic artist and things like that are very important.

What were some things that changed from your initial first version of the game to the final draft?
RANDY THOMPSON: There’s two things that immediately come to mind. We had this game and we had it tested and we had a prototype which we brought to a game festival and there was a way that we passed the ball or moved the ball at the beginning, and I sort of felt like things were missing. Then, at the last minute we said that that we could move a man or move a pawn before we moved the ball. And that made such a huge difference to the flow of the game. From the static beginning we had before, you could move a person first before you fired the ball and we had people there in Germany who said, “The way that it goes in motion, the flow of the game is huge.” Every time you have ball possession you roll the dice and move a player, but not the player with the ball. Then, you roll the dice and move the ball. It really opens the game up when you do that. It really helps you spring the first pass.
Then, the last major rule was decided to give the goalkeeper two dice to kick the ball up the field. Now he could really move the ball far. The funny thing was – this was not thought of at all. Then suddenly, we realized that when the goalkeeper kicks the ball it could go all the way up the field to the star square for a long distance shot if he rolls a twelve so it worked out perfectly. I remember playing these three young girls in Germany for this big store promotion, and I said to them, “If you win this game I will give you a copy of the game for free.” We often do this at store promotions. And they were winning 1-0 through the whole game, until the last play of the game when I rolled a twelve and kicked the ball all the way down the field for a long distance shot and scored on the last play of the game. They were so disheartened. Of course, I knew that I would give them the game anyways, but we went into overtime and penalty shootouts and they won the game. It was so funny though, to see that new rule in motion.