One of the games that most caught my eye at the 2005 American International Toy Fair was You Must Be an Idiot!, a trivia game scheduled to be published in late June by R&R Games.
Our preview includes a description of the gameplay; following is an interview with the designer, Stephen Glenn.
When did you come up with the concept for You Must Be an Idiot!?
I love this story. I think I wanted the game to get published more so I could tell this story than just for the sake of it getting published.
Frank DiLorenzo of R&R Games is a good friend of mine and we were both involved in a small, one-table tournament Poker game at last year's Gathering of Friends [an annual gaming event]. During the game (which he won, by the way), I casually asked Frank when R&R was accepting prototypes. It's my understanding that game companies have certain windows of time when they accept prototypes. The other times are spent playtesting and so forth.
Frank responded that he would need to see something immediately, meaning within the week. Yipes!
Now, he may have responded this way to agitate me and put me on tilt. I can't prove anything. Anyway, I didn't have anything ready to show that would fit his product line, but I didn't want to miss out on this opportunity. I spent the next several hours brainstorming for an interesting party/group game, since that's where R&R's product line leans these days.
It wasn't until late that evening that I was inspired during a game of Werewolf -- I think Frank was involved in that game, too. I love the idea of secret identities and trying to make people think you're someone you aren't (or aren't someone you are). It occurred to me that this concept could be used in a trivia game.
I worked something out and by the end of the Gathering I had a prototype that I was able to play with Frank. It was the last game I played that week, in fact.
How long did it take you to fully develop the game?
Really, just a few days. I worked out a system of scoring wherein some (or none) of the players in a given trivia round might be forced to answer a question wrong. It's very similar to the opening round of Werewolf.
Each player is given a card which tells them they're a regular villager, or a village idiot. The idiots have to get the question wrong. If no one suspects them of being an idiot, they get points for their deception. However, if someone honestly misses a question and is falsely accused of idiotry, they earn points. Each round new idiot cards are dealt out.
How long did it take to sell the game to R&R Games? Did you approach any other publishers?
Frank took the prototype with him after the Gathering and within a few months he informed me that it had playtested very highly with his groups. Honestly, the game was designed specifically for R&R Games. I never approached any other publisher with it, although another publisher friend of mine did ask for the game in case R&R ultimately turned it down.
Tell us about the process of choosing and writing the questions.
I wrote the majority of them going through almanacs, reference books, encyclopedias, etc. The type of question has to be very specific. It can't be too easy, or it will be too easy to weed out the idiots. It can't be too hard, or it will be too difficult to find the idiots.
I needed questions that were answerable by about 50 to 75% of the general population. Questions that most folks could reasonably answer, but where you wouldn't be totally shocked if they couldn't. Questions like, "Who was the third president of the United States?" and "What was the name of Bill Cosby's character on The Cosby Show?"
I got a lot of help from my father and from a few friends. I hope you'll see their names in the credits of the game.
Your first published game, Balloon Cup, is a two-player strategy game. What inspired you to design a multi-player trivia game?
I think the public is tired of all the two-player trivia games out there. I'm making a leap here, but I think the world may be ready for a multi-player trivia game.
Seriously, I'm hoping it will sell like the dickens and give me a little financial breathing room to create more frieky (strategy) games.
I'm not the biggest fan of most trivia games. Mechanically and "strategically" they're so obvious. Try to answer the question correctly. Get it right, yah! Get it wrong, aww! In You Must Be an Idiot!, there are times when you will want to answer incorrectly, and there are opportunities to get points when you honestly don't know the answer to a question.
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