Amabel Holland — Games as Political Art, Print-on-Demand Freedoms, and the Architecture of System...

About Amabel Holland Amabel Holland is a prolific board game designer, developer, and publisher who, as co-founder of Hollandspiele, has been responsible for over a hundred board games and expansions. Much of her deeply experimental work explores the potential of tabletop games as political art, how rule systems create cultural meaning, and the nature of games as living artifacts. In a profile by The New Yorker, she was cited as “widely considered one of today’s most innovative game designers” a title she remains humble about, but graciously accepts. A lifelong resident of the Detroit area, Amabel also creates documentaries exploring uncredited 20th-century designers in her free time. In this episode, we unpack how she built a self-publishing model where “even her flops are successful,” how game mechanics can model real-world systems of oppression, and how her evolving personal journey shifted her design focus from processing pain to crafting pure joy. Find Amabel on Youtube (   / @hollandspiele  ) and Hollandspiele.com (https://hollandspiele.com/) Ah-ha! Justin’s Takeaways Even My Flops Are Successful: Build a business model that protects your creative freedom instead of trapping you under a mountain of inventory debt. By using print-on-demand for Hollandspiele, Amabel bypasses massive manufacturing and warehouse costs, so even her smallest, weirdest games turn a profit. Once you take away that financial risk, you give yourself total permission to take wild design swings on niche ideas traditional publishers wouldn’t touch with a ten-foot pole. Pain Makes Good Art, But Not Happy Artists: Channeling personal rage, grief, and societal injustice can yield profound, critically acclaimed masterpieces like This Guilty Land or Doubt Is Our Product. At the same time, marinating in heavy, painful subject matter for years takes a real mental toll on the creator. As Amabel worked through personal grief and found genuine daily happiness, her design work naturally transitioned toward joyful, fun experiences like Dragon Pizza. It’s a good reminder that while pain can fuel powerful art, your long-term happiness and mental health as a human being should always come first. Show Notes “Taking a move in a board game is not as intuitive as moving in a video game. It’s not as immersive as watching a film. And you can use that distance to try to have people think about what the game is representing, think about systems.” (00:09:50) Unlike movies or video games, board games have a built-in superpower: physical distance. Because players have to manually flip through rulebooks and move pieces around, they aren't just zoning out in total immersion. You can use that deliberate friction to get players to pause, look under the hood, and actually think about the real-world systems you’re modeling. “It’s a game presented as a, an alien artifact with a rule book written in a iconographic language that you have to translate, and I will not answer questions about whether you got it right or not.” (00:13:00) Never underestimate how hungry players are for mystery. Amabel assumed City of Six Moons, which is a game with no text and an undeciphered alien rulebook, would only appeal to a tiny niche, but it became her biggest hit. When you take a risk and build something completely uncompromising, players may step up, form communities, and invest deeply to decode your vision. “The margins for print on demand are not are not gonna let you have a full-time living in New York City generally, right?” (00:27:50) High overhead can destroy creative freedom. By keeping her living costs low and operating out of an affordable spot like Detroit, Amabel built a real fortress around her lifestyle. When you strip away huge monthly bills, you never have to sell out your artistic vision or chase generic trends just to keep the lights on. “For me, the worst thing would be a game where you do bad things, and the game wags its finger at you.” (00:51:25) If your game forces a player to inhabit a villain or navigate heavy moral compromises, don’t lecture them through your mechanics. Shaming a player for executing the exact actions your game instructed them to take completely breaks player trust. Use abstract presentation and thoughtful mechanical distance so players can analyze the system objectively rather than feeling cheapened by preachy moralizing. P.S. If you are interested in working with me directly on your project, and learning from my mistakes rather than making your own, you can join my Think Like a Game Designer: Design Lab (https://carlcelinodspnza.github.io/ju...) . You can find Think Like a Game Designer on these platforms: This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit justingarydesign.substack.com/subscribe (https://justingarydesign.substack.com...)