{"id":4202,"date":"2025-04-07T09:44:05","date_gmt":"2025-04-07T08:44:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/boardgamewire.com\/?p=4202"},"modified":"2025-04-17T09:54:00","modified_gmt":"2025-04-17T08:54:00","slug":"every-decision-we-make-is-to-do-something-a-little-out-of-the-ordinary-cmyks-alex-hague-on-the-backlash-to-quacks-redesigned-art-and-trying-to-break-board-gamings-monoculture","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/boardgamewire.com\/index.php\/2025\/04\/07\/every-decision-we-make-is-to-do-something-a-little-out-of-the-ordinary-cmyks-alex-hague-on-the-backlash-to-quacks-redesigned-art-and-trying-to-break-board-gamings-monoculture\/","title":{"rendered":"“Every decision we make is to do something a little out of the ordinary”: CMYK’s Alex Hague on the backlash to Quacks’ redesigned art, and trying to ‘break board gaming’s monoculture’"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Few board game artistic redesigns of recent years have drawn as much polarising opinion as publisher CMYK’s recently announced reworking of Quacks of Quedlinburg, with online forums torn<\/a> over the switch to the 3D clay-style imagery<\/a> of Ryogo Toyoda. CMYK<\/a> chief executive Alex Hague – the creative director for the redesign – spoke to BoardGameWire about the motivations behind changing up the look of Schmidt Spiele<\/a>‘s million-selling game, and CMYK’s vision for breaking board games out of their ‘visual and demographic monoculture’.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

BoardGameWire:<\/strong> What were your main thrusts for redesigning the game’s looks – what did you hope to achieve through the new visuals, for players and for the game itself in a retail environment?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

CMYK CEO Alex Hague: Quacks\u00a0is playful, chaotic, and unexpected – so we wanted the new art to capture exactly that energy! We also saw a chance for the game to stand out, drawing in folks who might overlook a more traditional looking design.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
CMYK co-founder and CEO Alex Hague<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

You brought in Ryogo Toyoda for the cover art, which is really striking. What was it about Toyoda’s style that made you reach out to him in the first place<\/strong><\/strong>, and go forward with his designs?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

We explored a few different styles early on, but once we saw Ryogo\u2019s work, everything else went out the window. His style immediately captured the playful weirdness that playing\u00a0Quacks\u00a0FEELS like. We generally don\u2019t like elaborate backstories in games – ultimately how the game feels and its visual world should imply everything you need to know as a player. And Ryogo\u2019s work instantly draws you into a miniature world that\u2019s bubbly and playful and tactile.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

His art lets the visuals and actions speak for themselves without needing to spell everything out.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Were you surprised at the initial reaction from BoardGameGeek users about the new art style, or did you anticipate there would be pushback about the art design from some players?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Honestly yes! I like to think that we\u2019re always pushing the taste level with each CMYK release, but I thought the Quacks redesign wasn\u2019t as much of a radical departure as people clearly believe it is! There are so many lovely design features in Quacks that we had a principle of \u201cdo no harm\u201d with the redesign. So a lot of the elements, like the cauldron and ingredient shapes, are completely preserved.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I think it comes down to\u00a0Quacks\u00a0being a beloved game that a lot of people have a deep relationship with. And it\u2019s like when a company changes the packaging on your favorite ice cream – it\u2019s a little jarring and you don\u2019t know exactly why! But we also trust our process and know how good the work is – Ryogo himself said it\u2019s his favorite work of his career – and we trust that once players see the new edition in person, they’ll feel the same warmth and fun that drew us to his style.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Would it be fair to say this edition is not really aimed at people who already have the game, or even at players already very into the hobby – but rather to attract new gamers to the hobby?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

We want each CMYK release to bring new people into the hobby. So every decision we make is to do something a little out of the ordinary to hook a person who maybe doesn\u2019t see themselves playing games yet. Boardgames are a bit of a monoculture, visually and demographically, and we\u2019d love to do our part to break them out of that. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I was just looking at the stats for the Quacks how to play video, where a lot of the traffic came from BGG and r\/boardgames. 95% of the viewers were men. 95! That’s bananas.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

How important are strong visuals to CMYK generally, in terms of helping its designs stand out in the market \/ attract potential players?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I care so much more how a game looks on a person\u2019s shelf than I do about how it looks at retail. Stores like Target will always be \u201caway games\u201d for us, because CMYK\u2019s goal isn’t mass market domination: it’s nudging people richer, weirder, more interesting experiences. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

What’s your favourite of the CMYK art designs you’ve published so far, and why?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Everything we\u2019re releasing this year is just on another level. Besides Quacks, Magenta took two year to get the product design, structural packaging, brand system, card materials, and everything else exactly right. I joke that I\u2019ve been designing a box for two years, but it\u2019s not far from the truth!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Figment, part of CMYK’s Magenta range<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

And upcoming this year is Magical Athlete, a couple more Magenta titles yet to be released – one of a beloved classic card game – and even more stuff that I think will really blow people away.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Is AI art something you’d ever consider for a CMYK game, either as a box design or in the game itself? Why \/ why not?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

No with an asterisk. At least not in the way that it\u2019s commonly understood as replacing human artists and saving money.\u00a0But if it was a project that was impossible for one or multiple people to complete\u2014say a game with thousands and thousands of unique cards – it could be interesting to work with artists to train models on their work, where it would still very much be theirs. But overall, I think the way AI art is being used is the opposite of that and very depressing. If we ever used it, it would be to enhance human creativity, not to stifle it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For more stories like this direct to your email inbox, click here to sign up for BoardGameWire’s free email newsletter. \n\nAnd if you’ve found our reporting interesting or useful, please consider a paid subscription to help support our journalism!<\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Few board game artistic redesigns of recent years have drawn as much polarising opinion as CMYK’s recently announced reworking of Quacks of Quedlinburg, with online forums torn over the switch to the 3D clay-style imagery of Ryogo Toyoda. CMYK chief executive Alex Hague – the creative director for the redesign – spoke to BoardGameWire about the motivations behind changing up the look of the million-selling game, and CMYK’s vision for breaking board games out of their ‘visual and demographic monoculture’.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4204,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[1607,405,6,135,1416,1641,634,1642,633],"class_list":["post-4202","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-feature","tag-alex-hague","tag-art","tag-board-game","tag-board-games","tag-cmyk","tag-quacks","tag-quacks-of-quedlinburg","tag-ryogo-toyoda","tag-schmidt-spiele"],"blocksy_meta":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/boardgamewire.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4202","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/boardgamewire.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/boardgamewire.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/boardgamewire.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/boardgamewire.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4202"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/boardgamewire.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4202\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4208,"href":"https:\/\/boardgamewire.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4202\/revisions\/4208"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/boardgamewire.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4204"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/boardgamewire.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4202"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/boardgamewire.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4202"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/boardgamewire.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4202"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}