About Vlaada
Vlaada Chvátil is one of the most influential game designers of the modern era. As the creative force behind classics like Through the Ages, Codenames, and Galaxy Trucker, and a co-founder of Czech Games Edition (CGE), he’s built a career defined by curiosity, craft, and an uncompromising commitment to making games he actually wants to play. Vlaada’s path—from programming and digital game development to shaping some of the most enduring tabletop designs of the last 20 years—has given him a rare perspective on iteration, collaboration, and long-term creative sustainability. In this episode, we explore how he chooses projects, why great development beats marketing every time, and how designing for joy has fueled both his games and his company.
Ah-Ha Moments
We Sell Games So We Can Make Games: Vlaada reframes the entire business of game design. The purpose of publishing is to fund the next act of creation, not to chase sales targets. This mindset frees designers to make bolder, more honest games, because success is measured by creative momentum, not quarterly performance.
The Best Marketing Is Ruthless Investment in Development: CGE spent its early years with no marketing team at all, because they didn’t need one. Vlaada’s long-term strategy is simple and difficult: invest heavily in development and let quality do the work. Great games create their own momentum. Word of mouth, sustained sales growth, and long tails are the natural result of excellence.
The Golden Rule of Collaborative Design: When collaborators disagree, Vlaada avoids persuasion entirely. Instead of fighting to prove one idea right and the other wrong, the goal is to find a third solution neither person originally proposed, but that both genuinely like. This reframes disagreement as a creative engine, not a conflict, and almost always leads to stronger, more resilient designs.
Show Notes
“If I stop liking the game after twenty or thirty plays, then there’s no point to continue.” (00:14:48)
Vlaada explains that his earliest and most important playtesting phase happens alone. Before external feedback, before polish, before production, he plays his own games dozens of times in a sandbox environment. If the core experience doesn’t sustain his interest, the game goes back to the idea stage. The insight here is simple and brutal: no amount of testing can save a game its creator no longer enjoys. Personal endurance is a stronger signal than market research.
“We are selling the games so we can create them. We are not creating the games to sell them.” (00:26:46)
This line reframes the entire relationship between creativity and business. Vlaada sees publishing not as the purpose of design, but as the mechanism that funds future work. That mindset shaped Czech Games Edition from the start, allowing the team to prioritize passion, curiosity, and long-term quality over short-term optimization. The result is a healthier creative engine where success is measured by continued creation, rather than sales numbers alone.
“I still believe the most efficient way is to make the game actually great.” (00:31:41)
When I ask about marketing, Vlaada points back to development. CGE spent its early years with no dedicated marketing staff, relying instead on deep iteration and polish. Vlaada argues that truly great games create their own momentum through word of mouth and longevity. The lesson is counterintuituve: marketing can amplify quality, but it can’t replace it. Long-term growth comes from investing where players feel it most.
“In Codenames, it is really about connecting minds.” (00:44:18)
Discussing the digital version of Codenames, Vlaada explains why the team deliberately avoided AI opponents. Unlike strategy games where the challenge comes from systems, Codenames is about human intuition and shared meaning. Even asynchronous digital play preserves that core by keeping people at the center of the experience. The takeaway is a reminder that medium changes should never erase a game’s core sentiment—digital adaptations must protect what makes the game human.
