Jack Degnan, a regular at Games, Guys & Grub – The San Diego LGBT Community Center’s monthly men’s game night – loved playing board games as a kid, but it wasn’t until five year’s ago, when he took a course in game design, that he turned his passion for games into a part-time career. Since then, Degnan began designing board games and has published three of them so far: Word on The Street, It Fits, and Funny Business. Degnan describes his games as party-oriented, thought provoking and perfect for getting people to socialize. Last month, Degnan won the Rising Star Inventor Award at the TAGIE Awards, a toy and games industry awards ceremony. Degnan recently sat down with the Gay & Lesbian Times to talk about his love of designing board games, where he gets his ideas from, his thoughts on receiving a TAGIE Award and why he thinks board games are still relevant in a day and age of video games and wii.

Gay & Lesbian Times: What do you like about designing games?

Jack Degnan: Designing games is a dream I’ve had since I was a kid. I like finding ways to use words, ideas and activities in ways that have not been done before. I get a great deal of enjoyment watching people have fun with something I created. Fortunately, I love my day job, and it is very fulfilling. I do sometimes get to be creative at work, but it’s mostly science. Board game design provides a nice balance for me.

GLT: How do you get ideas for games?

JD: Being a board game designer, like an artist, means being a good listener and observer. I think good artists and writers know that ideas are flying all around all the time. You just got to pay attention. Recently a friend had gotten a little upset with me and told me that what I was saying was ‘drivel’. I thought that word ‘drivel’ sounded pretty cool and sounded like a good name for a game so I looked it up to make sure I understood what the word meant. I got an idea for the game, created a prototype, tested it several times and pitched it to a few publishers. Last week, I got a call from a publisher who is going to publish the game. I called my friend who was upset and thanked him for the idea and promised him a free copy of the game. He’s still a little mad at me, but glad he could inspire me to make a successful game. So I created a board game out of an insult. Ideas are everywhere. You just got to pay attention.

GLT: Tell me about your games (all three of them)? What are they about? What do they include? What is unique about each of them?

JD: I have three games currently on the market, Word on The Street, It Fits, and Funny Business. There is a junior version of Word on the Street coming soon, and I have contracts on the way for two other games with two different publishers. If all goes as planned, I will have at least six games on the market by 2011.

All my games are for ages 12 and up, but younger kids have played them and like them. It Fits (no, it’s not a sex game) is a game where players try to think of an object that fits the categories on the cards in front of them. Players often have lively debates as to whether an object really fits a category or not.

Word on the Street is clearly the best seller so far. Two teams each take one side of the board (the street) and pull the letters of the alphabet back and forth, like tug-of-war, by spelling words that fit a category – all in 30 seconds. The other team can shout words to cause a distraction. It is fun with just two people or all the way up to ten people.

The third game, Funny Business, is my personal favorite. The premise is you try to come up with a name for an unlikely business merger like a fruit stand [and] a funeral home and vote on the best name. There are words on the cards to help you think, so it’s not so hard to be creative and clever. For a merger of a funeral home and fruit stand, how about ‘Rest In Peach,’ ‘Apples to Ashes,’ ‘Dead and Berried’ or the ‘Grapeful Dead’?

GLT: Are there any similarities between the three games you’ve created so far or are they all different? If they have similarities, what are they?

JD: I’d say all the games are in the party-game category – good for groups of friends who want to get together and have a good time. But they are also intellectually stimulating in their own ways. They’ve each won some awards, and I was excited to see that Word on The Street just won the Oppenheim gold seal award, which is an award given to educational related games. They each take 30 to 40 minutes to play.

GLT: Have you had any terrible ideas for games in the past? If so, what were they?

JD: Several. Apparently my worst idea involved playing the game in public and included strangers. Publishers were intrigued, but it was just too bizarre for anyone to publish. One publisher play-tested it and suggested I call the game, ‘How to get your ass kicked in a bar.’

GLT: Do you have any ideas for any future games? If so, what are they?

JD: Yes. But if I told you, I’d have to kill you.

GLT: Is there any relation to your games and you being gay?

JD: I put gay cards in all the prototypes of my games, but so far every publisher has excluded them from the final product. For example, for Funny Business I had to think of 200 different types of businesses. Two of the businesses the company decided to exclude were ‘Gay Bar’ and ‘Female Impersonation Show’. However, they didn’t have any trouble with ‘Proctologist’, ‘Lingerie store’, Liquor store’ and ‘Nudist club’. The toy and game industry is very ‘family-oriented,’ which is probably their excuse for eliminating the ‘gay’ category cards. I look forward to the day when straight families realize that the words ‘gay’ and ‘lesbian’ are not about sex or dirty words - and they are as much family words as ‘teenager’ and ‘homework’ are.

I suggested to the publishers of Word on The Street (Out of the Box Publishing) that we make a gay version of the game. They thought about it, but decided the market wasn’t big enough. When I’m rich and can afford to publisher my own game, I’ll make a gay game or maybe a series of them. I think there’s a market for it, and there aren’t many out there.

GLT: You’ve won the TAGIE Award’s Rising Star Inventor Award. How do you feel about it?

JD: In early November, I received an email that I was nominated for this award and was invited to the TAGIE awards, which is kind of like the Grammies for toy and game inventors, and I went to Chicago for probably one of the best weekends of my life. When my name was called as the winner, I was surprised, excited and very humbled. But there were other highlights: I met the man who invented the game of Life (who lives in San Diego) and also the woman who made Jenga. Actresses and fellow game designers Daryl Hannah and Hillary Shepard gave me the award and tried to steal it from me before I gave my acceptance speech. After I won the award, big wigs in the industry were coming up and shaking my hand. It was a very exciting evening!

GLT: As a designer of board games, why do you think they are still relevant in a day and age of video games and wii?

JD: Every time I tell people I make games, they assume I’m talking about computer games. Living in the digital age is great for so many reasons, but no one can argue that it is causing people to become more isolated. We walk around all day with our noses in our iPhones and iPods and go home to sit and stare at a screen and communicate on Facebook, Twitter and e-mail. We play games a lot with ourselves. We play games with others who live in other cities or countries. What’s missing is personal interaction. We can’t see the smiles and hear the laughs and innuendos live and in person. People I have spoken to in the industry have told me that game night is making a big come back right now across the world and that means table-top games, board games and card games. I think people are starting to realize there is something missing, something called ‘togetherness’.