Cheapass Games - Board Games

Gaming Dirt Cheap, Interview with James Ernest of Cheapass Games. This article graciousily provided by About.com.

James Ernest, the 30-year-old founder of Cheapass Games, a company which has quickly established itself as a favorite among gamers for simple designs and rock-bottom prices, started publishing games in 1997. Several (five to be specific) have been nominated for various Origins Awards and a few (two -- Kill Doctor Lucky and Give Me the Brain!) have won. Kill Doctor Lucky, my personal favorite Cheapass Game release, also is an inductee into the Games Magazine GAMES 100 list (so are several others).

Ernest's latest creation is Brawl, a real-time fighting card game that he has high hopes for. After a successful preview at this year's GenCon, Brawl has been released to the general public. Games generally take less than a minute, but has a turn-based variant known as "training mode" so players can get the hang of the game under less pressure-packed conditions.

Ernest left the University of Missouri at Rolla (he called it "an engineering school dressed up as a university") after five semesters as a mechanical engineering major. ("I majored in mechanical engineering until I discovered that I was on track to work among geeks for the rest of my life," he said. "Look at me now: I'm a game designer. Not much different really.")

He recently took some time to answer a few questions about Brawl, the upcoming word game Escape from Elba (you're Napoleon; so is everyone else) and all things Cheapass.

When did you first become interested in board and card games? I don't know. I've played the old standards for as long as I can remember.

What were some of your first favorite board games?

"I agonized for a long time over (the design of) some games I really shouldn't have, and some games which are incredibly good took almost no time at all."
--James Ernest

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