by Website Mojo Nation published on November 2024 one of the -probably- very few existing interviews with Ben Rathbone, one of the key collaborators of Stephen Baker in the creation of HeroQuest, performed by Billy Langsworthy. At the time of the interview, Ben Rathbone was the Head of Games Design and Development at Ceaco, a jigsaw puzzles manufacturer.
The full interview with Ben Rathbone can be found in Mojo Nation website here, however, I took the licence of transcripting below just the questions and answers linked with HeroQuest and Stephen Baker context... nevertheless of course I encourage you to read the full interview to know more about this non too mentioned designer in the development process of HeroQuest back in the day.
Thanks to Billy Langsworthy for performing this great interview.
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EXTRACT OF INTERVIEW WITH BEN RATHBONE by Billy Langsworthy, published the 13th of November 2024 at website mojo-nation.com
- I.D.I.O.T. Award Winner Ben Rathbone discusses his lifetime in games and much, much more…
Billy Langsworthy from Mojo Nation (MN): Ben, it’s taken a while to get our diaries to align… But here we are – thank you for making time!
Ben Rathbone (BR): Pleasure!
MN: So… Yours is a friendly, familiar and seemingly omnipresent face in the industry. How did you come to be in toys and games?
BR: I used to work at the very first Games Workshop which was around the corner from my school in Hammersmith, London. I also used to hang out there, playing games. Just through that, I got to know a gentleman called Stephen Baker, whom you may have heard of…
MN: Oh, yes… And I’ll just say that if people want to know why that’s a legendary name, they can read an interview with Stephen Baker here. For now, you would say people best know him as…
BR: Oh, the inventor of Hero Quest! In those days, though – for a while – he was the manager of Games Workshop. So I knew him from playing games. And then we had a gentleman called Roger Ford, sadly no longer with us. He’s the father of Max Ford… Roger ran Milton Bradley in the UK at the time. He came in and started chatting, then he asked if we’d to like to come and test some games for him. Stephen went along too; he then basically got a job there.
MN: Stephen went to Milton Bradley?
BR: Right. Meanwhile, I went to university down in Brighton on the south coast. But then – between my second and third year – Stephen asked if I wanted to come and do some summer work there; testing and refining his new game, Hero Quest. So I did some work on that. And it happens that they were based in Richmond, Greater London… Which is my hometown!
MN: No?!
BR: Yes! They were round the corner! So that was great. After I finished, I went back down to Brighton, but I was keeping in touch. And for whatever reason, they mentioned they’d got an assistant designer position available and asked if I wanted to join them. It was one of those time and place things.
MN: Yes, but you’re being a little modest. You were also the right person! So you more or less went from university straight into the industry… This is your whole life! And for context, when was this, Ben? What was the year?
BR: It’s 34 years ago; 1989. And Stephen and I both ended up in the States. He lives two hours that way!
MN: So straight out of uni, into the industry; 34 years – and still going strong. Let me ask you this: if you didn’t do that, if you weren’t in toys and games, what do you think you would be doing?
BR: Well, originally I was looking to get into publishing. That’s what I was originally, looking to do because I did English and history at Brighton University. And publishing is what I was investigating. But it’s one of these things… I never really thought there were people who professionally worked on the design of games.
MN: But games were on your radar, obviously… You played them as a child?
BR: Oh, yes; we always played games as a family… I’ve got two older brothers. One of them got a copy of Dungeons & Dragons way back when it first came out – our friend’s father traveled to the US a lot and brought an early copy back with him. So we played that. But once Roger Ford mentioned designing games, I just thought: ‘that’s kind of interesting’.
MN: Not to interrupt you, Ben, but Roger Ford and Max Ford are both I.D.I.O.T. winners, of course… And I want to mention that Max did a lovely interview about their awards. People can read that here. Apologies! You also mentioned role-playing games there, and that interests me because a lot of inventor relations folk at mass market companies don’t have a great interest in that. Not a criticism – they just focus more on other types of game. What kind of games do you personally prefer?
BR: That’s a great question! I have a scarily large collection of games. And since I live in the US, I have a giant basement where I can store them! Which is not a good thing because it just encourages me…
MN: Ha!
BR: These days, though, I’ve got to the point where I just can’t be doing with deep-strategy games anymore. I just haven’t got the time for them. So I currently prefer to play games that are low- to mid-level strategy. Things that you can play over two hours and repeat. I also like card games. I’m kind-of fascinated by all the classic card games and what you can do with them. Look at Rummy… Rummy’s done all sorts of things with it. Mystery Rummy’s a great example. But then, I also like just pulling out new things and trying those!
MN: Time permitting…
BR: Time permitting! In fact, one sad thing about Gen Con this year was – because we were demoing on the stand the whole time – we didn’t really get time to go out and play stuff. But at home, we still have our family favourites. Monopoly Deal just came to mind! Monopoly Deal, by the way, is the thing I’m most proud of in all my time at Hasbro.
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MN: Brilliant. We’ll need to start wrapping this up quite soon because I know how busy you are, but I wanted to talk about your I.D.I.O.T. Award, Ben. So now… What would you say if I were to ask why you think you were singled out for that?
BR: Well… For a start, I was truly surprised; completely taken aback. And you know, it was one of these things where I was chatting away and could hear in the background a little about who the winner is, what they’d done… And it was Roger Ford doing this intro: he’d originally hired me at Hasbro. But I didn’t put it together right away. As to why – who knows?
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MN: Whom would you have thanked?
BR: I would’ve thanked Roger Ford, Stephen Baker, Mike Gray, and David Fear who was basically my boss at the time. He’d more or less taken me round and introduced me to people and showed me the ropes on inventor relations. Great people.
MN: Brilliant. Well, there we are, Ben… Let’s end with those overdue thank yous! If nothing else, it feels like we’ve put that on the record and righted an understandable wrong! Thanks, Ben.
End of interview.
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According to this source, Ben Rathbone joined Hasbro in 1989 (I guess at Milton Bradley UK) and left the Company in 2010. Here you have some extra official data about him, taken from Hasbro website (source, here):
Ben is the Vice President of Gaming Design, overseeing all adult targeted games including Party Games and Strategy games. Ben works hard to make sure that we are bringing the most fun games and satisfying experiences to our rapidly growing adult gamer audience. Born and raised in the UK, Ben is an English graduate from Brighton University. His passion for designing games started with his brothers at home. His career working in games began at the first ever Games Workshop store in London. From there, he got a job as Assistant Games Designer at Milton Bradley and has never looked back. Ben has worked on designing of many game brands from Clue to Monopoly to Avalon Hill to Dungeons and Dragons. He personally loves games that feature theme and story. Now residing in the US, he loves working in the best area of gaming with the most passionate player audience.
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Links to many other relevant interviews about HeroQuest are compiled in this thread.
