Game On

A FEW YEARS AGO MACKLES DECIDED TO CREATE a strategic card game. He’d never invented a game before, but whenever he played one he always thought about how he would improve it. “I kept thinking, ‘This game would be better if…,’” he says. A former graphic designer for 23 years at WGBH in Boston, the Auburndale, Massachusetts, resident had the artistic chops to get the look of his game just right. So he did.

He named his card game Iota and self-published it when he was satisfied with the design. Mackles then submitted it to the 2012 Mensa Mind Games competi- tion—and won. Winning attracted the attention of some major game publishers. Mackles ended up licensing Iota to Gamewright, and more than 100,000 little metal tins of the grid-based game have been sold since.

Mackles works as a freelance graphic designer and painter when he’s not developing new games through his company, PDG Games. He’s currently selling four card games he created. “There’s something about games that just kind of intrigues me,” he says. “I see them as little perpetual- motion machines—there’s a system that has its own engine, one thing is con- nected to another, it all kind of works almost like a mechanical thing.”

He’s working on a new project, a game of global domination called World, that he takes to meetings of the Game Makers Guild, a local com- munity of more than 500 game devel- opers and players. He and the other members play-test their games-in- progress and offer each other feedback on how to make them better. Mack- les hopes to debut World this fall at the Boston Festival of Indie Games.

GENE’S TOP 5

FAVORITE GAMES

Poker. “A perfect blend of luck, skill and interaction”

Chess.“The game is simple. The strategy is complex.”

Pictionary. “It’s all about communication, not drawing.”

20 Questions. “Basic and fun. No equipment needed.”

Hearts. “Light and deep—a rare combination”