Megan Scheidler, Co-Creator and Art Director, Good Nerd Bad Nerd Games
In Career Spotlight, we profile women who work in the gaming industry. It is our goal to show the vastness and variety of jobs within the world of gaming and to share professional advice and perspectives with our readers.
This week we profile Megan Scheidler, Co-Creator and Art Director, an independent board game company that created the game The Treasure of Montecristo Island. We discuss how she co-founded Good Nerd Bad Nerd Games, how her background in theatrical scenic design and graphic design contributes to her work now, and some of the ways her team has been mindful of representation and inclusivity in their game The Treasure of Montecristo Island.
Megan Scheidler, photo courtesy of the subject
Could you please tell us your name, your position, and your company?
My name is Megan Scheidler, and I am the Artistic Director at Good Nerd Bad Nerd Games, and the co-creator of The Treasure of Montecristo Island, our company’s debut board game.
What inspired you to form this indie game company? Could you tell us a bit of the origin story?
Good Nerd Bad Nerd Games is an extension of the news outlet and podcast Good Nerd Bad Nerd, founded by my husband Bryan Scheidler, 10 years ago.
After countless board game nights, Bryan thought it might be interesting to create an original tabletop game based loosely on one of his favorite video games, Rust. At the time, we had been playing a fair amount of cooperative games, so feeling lead in that direction, a co-op game started taking shape. I quickly jumped on board to help Bryan iron out gameplay mechanics and create the flavor of what is now The Treasure of Montecristo Island.
Can you tell us a bit about The Treasure of Montecristo Island? What can gameHERs look forward to with this game?
The Treasure of Montecristo Island
The Treasure of Montecristo Island is a co-op, adventure, survival game with crafting. Loosely based on the historical legend of the island of Montecristo, players work together to locate the island’s lost treasure (represented by a metal gold coin) while avoiding an NPC Thief (non-playable character) and surviving the island’s elements. In order to win, your team must utilize each player’s individual skills, while also being lucky with dice.
The Treasure of Montecristo is a 2-6 player tabletop game for gamers 10 years and older, and is a lighthearted experience with approximately 90+ minutes of play time.
We also released an expansion pack called The Thief and the Purple Sapphire, for those who want to try their hand playing as the Thief against all of their friends. When using the expansion, players experience the island with heightened urgency, new hindrances, and asymmetrical gameplay.
Within your role at the company, what do you focus on? What are your main responsibilities?
As Artistic Director I crafted the look and feel of our game. My goal was to create a tactile experience utilizing antique paper and wood textures combined with modern details and limited pops of color. It’s fun to look back at early prototypes because although much has improved, the essence of the game remains the same, down to color choices and box design, which was always intended to be a branded wooden crate with metal straps.
Our illustrator, Brian Carroll, was able to take my vision to a new level. Once Brian had completed the illustration elements, it was my job to implement them. This workflow made my job very satisfying as I was then able to place elements exactly how and where I wanted on the board, the game tiles, and the rule book.
Currently, in post-production, I manage our company’s Instagram account. We want people to know about our game, but my primary goal on Instagram is to give something of value to gamers that’s not necessarily Montecristo Island-specific. From unboxing videos, to photos and spotlights of games we enjoy, to silly Instagram reels, my hope is to spread some joy in the gaming community.
One thing we’ve found throughout our interviews is that people come to the games industry from a wide range of backgrounds. How did the professional or personal background you had previously prepare you for your current role?
My background is theatrical scenic design with a side helping of graphic design.
I think my scenic design background aids me in thinking about game design as a complete visual experience. Much like in the theatre, the story being told and the experience of the audience is key. In game design, the stage is both smaller and closer, but also tactile. In tabletop gaming you pick up, throw, collect, and gather items in your hands. Making this experience feel organic and enjoyable boils down to good design.
Scheidler adjusted the wooden resource cubes in The Treasure of Montecristo Island to be accessible to those with red-green and blue-yellow colorblindness
My graphic design background has come in handy not only when communicating with our illustrator — and by communicating I mean geeking out over fonts — but also when compiling all text and images in the rule book. I was excited for an excuse to use Adobe InDesign, and although there will be a few improvements in our second printing, I’m proud of how the rule book came together both in how it reads and how it looks visually.
Looking a bit further back, on a personal note, I grew up with an ophthalmologist father. I tapped into his resources for my junior high science fair project on colorblindness, and I recall testing all the elementary students at my school for colorblindness as an experiment. I can only assume the correlation, but during game development, it occurred to me that we needed to adjust our colored wooden resource cubes in order to be more accessible to colorblind gamers. Originally all gathered resources in the game were small wooden cubes of differing colors. The solution was simple yet profoundly changed the look of many elements in the game. We adjusted the shapes of wooden resources, keeping Red and Orange cubes (squares), but changing Yellow and Grey to cylinders (circles), and Blue and Green to prisms (triangles). I’m happy to say that our game is now accessible to those with red-green and blue-yellow colorblindness.
At the*gameHERs we are interested in how game designers and developers think about diversity and representation when it comes to game characters. What has been The Treasure of Montecristo Island’s approach to its cast of characters?
Early in the process when I started putting faces to characters, I mocked up our character tiles as double-sided tiles with female and male sides. It’s important to have equal representation of males and females as well as equal ability in roles of leadership (the Captain), brawn (the Muscle), brains (the Anthropologist), and cunning (the Stowaway), etc.
We then took it a step further and assigned unique countries of origin and backstories to each of our twelve Adventurers. It is important to Good Nerd Bad Nerd Games that all gamers are able to see themselves in the characters of our game. The response was overwhelmingly positive. Our Adventurers hail from India, Haiti, Sydney, Guatemala, Korea, Norway, The Philippines, Russia, Namibia, Iraq, Brazil, and England. Naming our Adventurers also took careful planning as to be eighteenth-century appropriate, and on a personal note, I assigned our Korean character the last name Park, after my adopted sister’s Korean last name.
We are currently working on two new Adventurer tiles (four unique characters) as an add-on for some interesting gameplay additions, and our team is excited to add more representation to the playing field.
What advice do you have for women who may want to start a career in gaming or professionals who want to pivot their careers into the games industry, particularly when it comes to working in tabletop games?
My advice would be to bring in others (particularly women) alongside you that both complement and challenge your skillsets. After my husband Bryan Scheidler and I hosted a large beta test event, our friends L. Stephanie Tait and her husband Brian Carroll approached us about joining the team. They both bring to the table such valuable and unique skills that we were overjoyed by the proposition!
Stephanie is an amazing producer, who pushes us to aim high, but also keeps us on a tight schedule so we could meet our deadlines, but she’s also a brilliant writer/director who has been invaluable in the Kickstarter process and beyond. The only reason we have such a fun, quirky, and informative Kickstarter video is because Stephanie wrote and directed it. Brian Carroll, my favorite illustrator, was just what we needed to move the bar from good to excellent, and never once did he attempt to steamroll my artistic direction — on the contrary, Brian would go deeper and more nuanced with my direction.
Bringing in other professionals that are both brilliant at what they do and trustworthy to uplift others is key for success.
As fans and players, what can we do to help support women and marginalized gender professionals working in tabletop games?
Seek out women game creators, women gamers, and follow their work. Don’t stop at just a like or follow on social media, seek out their projects and support them. Buy their game(s) or their merchandise and send them messages of encouragement. Share with others when you find a female in tabletop you want to support.
What do you hope to see for the future of women working in tabletop games?
I hope to see more games created by women and more women professionals working at gaming conventions.
Learn more about The Treasure of Montecristo Island and follow it on social:
Website: www.montecristogame.com
Instagram: @treasure_of_montecristo_island
Facebook: @MontecristoGame
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