W. Eric Martin: Company profile: Real Deal Games/Review: Parlay

Self-publishers often warn others of the pitfalls that come with bringing your own game to market, but Paul and Jennifer Sturgis have no horror stories to tell about their experience as the owners of Real Deal Games. “[T]he industry is filled with people who seem a bit too eager to tell you how it is and what you can and can’t do and how hard it’s going to be,” says Paul Sturgis, “and it might not be a bad idea to take it all with a grain of salt.”

The Sturgis’ first title, a poker/word card game called Parlay (reviewed below), has been well-received by game publications and reviewers and is gradually making its way to a larger audience, after initially being sold only through Real Deal’s website. “We’ve been particularly surprised at the wide variety of shops that have been interested in carrying Parlay, including specialty coffee houses, golf pro shops, a resort gift shop, a boutique, a bookstore, a country crafts and fudge shop, and a campground store—and we just got an order from a home décor shop,” says Sturgis.

Parlay originated prior to the 21st century poker craze, but the growth of poker as a mainstream social activity—along with the Sturgis’ ability to create professional artwork, web and packaging design, and promotional materials—encouraged them to publish the game.

The game’s central idea of creating words and poker hands simultaneously was in place from the get-go, but Parlay changed significantly during informal playtest sessions. “Although we relied a lot on feedback from family, friends, colleagues, and folks from our community, people in general were thankfully very candid and critical (and as a result helpful), unlike the warnings we received that people you know will tell you what you want to hear,” says Sturgis. Word bluffing was added to the game, along with stay/fold chips and a score sheet to improve usability.

The company has two more games in the pipeline: Hodge Podge and Ballyhoo. “Both are card games and will have a packaging design similar to Parlay,” says Sturgis. “The plan is that all our games will be card games—thus the ‘Deal’ in Real Deal Games.... We’re both very fortunate that gaming is something that we’ve enjoyed together since we met over ten years ago.”

Parlay

Word games, like trivia games, are always at risk of being spoiled by dividing players into “haves” and “have nots.” While some players are jazzed by their ability to pull strange words out of thin air, this dichotomy leaves others frustrated and determined to never play a word game again.

To level the playing field between those with vast vocabularies and those with a void, word games typically throw another challenge at players. Ye olde Scrabble, for example, has a crossword element that you ignore at your peril, and Boggle requires a spatial recognition skill that some wordmeisters can’t master. Of the newer word games that I’ve played, Linkity pushes the pedal to the medal, giving you little time to ponder your picks, Plext has time-sensitive bidding, Attribute cares about laughs more than language, and Typo—well, Typo tends to reward those with large vocabularies, but the game is still fun.

Parlay takes on the word game dilemma by mashing letters and point values onto a standard deck of playing cards and putting poker skills into play. The rulebook contains several games, but all of them involve players having a hand of cards, sharing a few community cards, and playing poker and forming words simultaneously.

In each game, once players have exchanged cards in their hands (as happens in some of the games) and the community cards are fully revealed, players use these cards to create both the highest scoring word and the best poker hand. Player secretly decide whether to stay in the round or fold, then everyone reveals their decision simultaneously.

If you’ve folded, you score points for your word and are through for the round. Everyone who stayed compares poker hands, and the highest hand receives a bonus equal to the value of that player’s word. Whichever player in the poker phase has the highest total—counting word points, the poker bonus (for one person), and a length bonus (for all players with at least five letters in their word)—scores for that round; everyone else receives a fat shiny zero. You then shuffle the cards and play another round, keeping running point totals until someone passes the 500 point threshold and wins.

“The balance of letters and bonuses ended up being fairly complicated,” says Sturgis. “The ranks and suits of poker cards had to be balanced in terms of both letter value and consonant/vowel distribution. The bonus for a six-letter word also had to be balanced with the poker bonus since the decision to draw for a winning poker hand or a longer word (or both) is one of the core mechanics of the game.”

Sturgis says that tallying the word score over hundreds of hands showed an average value of 45, which is now the six-letter length bonus. “The value of 100 for a seven-letter length bonus is admittedly low based on the odds,” he says, “but we didn’t want a single seven-letter word to run away with the game, and we also didn’t want word game mavens to be able to ignore the poker aspect of the game.”

In this, the Sturgises have succeeded because the two aspects of Parlay (which, by the way, is a word worth 100 points) mesh seamlessly. You can’t concentrate on forming words and ignore the suits and ranks because you’ll almost certainly lose. And sometimes you’ll hold onto a card that will never fit your poker hand simply because it’s a high value consonant—and if you do win the poker showdown, the doubling of your word score will have made the gamble worthwhile.

Parlay is a winner that can bring word game and poker fans to the same table for an evening’s entertainment. Can ESPN broadcasts of the World Series of Parlay be far behind?

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