I am Zack "Jick" Johnson, creator of Kingdom of Loathing and director of the newly-released West of Loathing. Ask me anything!

Come clean, Jick... is there a way to open the Sunken Chest?

It's the most enduring mystery of our age.

Hello, I am interested in playing West of Loathing but I don't believe in making internet purchases. Will it be available on CD-ROM or possibly vinyl record or wax phonograph cylinder?

We do have a deal with the USPS to reprint the entirety of WoL's text content as an extremely long series of commemorative stamps.

Hey Jick, I'm a former KoL addict (account number was something in the 500k range) who is looking forward to checking out WoL.

Do you already have any additional content planned for WoL that will be released in the future?

Why the western theme?

Do you miss your long hair?

Thanks for checking out the new thing!

Additional content: We have several pieces of DLC planned, and we're very excited about making some more stuff while we're still deeply embedded in our development tools. Kevin and I are going to invade Riff's Portland dungeon lair for a big design session for the first one next month.

Western theme: This keeps coming up, so I'm gonna cheap out and paste in something from the Gamasutra interview I did.

I've always felt like the wild west was just as just as appropriate a setting for a fantasy RPG as... weird default medieval Europe is. It's got an immediately comprehsible level of technology, plenty of cliche good vs. evil tropes, an inherently hostile environment to explore, a focus on fighting and treasure -- so many reasons it works as a fantasy setting. It's always been genuinely surprising to me that more RPGs aren't set there, and I guess I wanted to do my part to correct the oversight.

Do I miss my long hair: Not even a little bit. I was able to get all of my work on West of Loathing done in the time I used to spend cleaning my shower drain and the roller on my vacuum cleaner.

Hey Jick!

Just a short question about Kingdom of Loathing: Do you have any stats of how many players failed the literacy test? Seems like it'd be fun to know.

Also, having a lot of fun with West of Loathing so far. Thanks for the awesome game!

We never tracked that!

What effect do you think West of Loathing will have on the long term future of Kingdom of Loathing?

I'm really curious to find out!

Part of the reason we decided to make West of Loathing in the first place is a conversation I had with Alexis Kennedy (the former creative director of Failbetter Games) a few years back at a GDC.

He told me that Sunless Sea (their standalone game) more or less brought Fallen London (their multiplayer browser game) back from the brink of death and totally revitalized it.

I think Fallen London is a little more immediately accessible than KoL is, so I'm not sure we're going to see that level of gains, but I'm hopeful that it'll bring in at least a little bit of new blood.

Hey Jick, I just joined KoL a few weeks ago during the AskReddit '17 Influx. I'm loving this game so far! Just wondering, how much testing does it take when making world events, and how do you go about it? Thanks!

At this point, the backend for KoL is so established that we can more or less develop live content in real time with essentially no testing at all.

Chris Moyer, KoL's programmer and sysadmin, has been doing a great job keeping the fires burning over there while the rest of us have been focused on WoL.

Is West of Loathing Frog Fractions 2?

Frog Fractions 2 is the friends we made along the way, such as Jim Crawford.

I've got West of Loathing downloading as I type this. Is it safe to play with my 7-year old? I'm sure a lot of the gags will go over his head, but is there any content that might not be suitable for him?

I love Kingdom of Loathing and can't wait to start West of Loathing!

We shoot for a Looney Tunes level -- quasi-risque stuff that's funny to adults if they get it, but not something that's gonna teach a kid something they shouldn't learn.

There a few hells and dammits peppered around, but that's as bad as the language gets.

I think as long as you're okay with the level of cartoon violence that there is, then it's probably okay for a 7 year old? You might also try to do a no-fights playthrough. Buy the Dark Horse for that.

Oh I should say we shoot for Looney Tunes but without the extremely-embarrassing-in-retrospect racism.

Hi Jick! EDIT: I wrote Jack by mistake and am wallowing in shame.

Thank you for providing me entertainment since 2008-ish. I don't remember when I started playing.

My question is do you have to research your pop-culture references you put into the game or are you just a huge enough nerd they just come to you and the team?

I can't really speak for Riff, but if I mention or nod to another property, it's almost always because it just naturally occurred to me while writing.

Every once in a while if I decide I want to write an entire paragraph using nothing but the lyrics from, like, Foreigner songs, then I do have to do some research.

Also Wikipedia's articles for "list of pasta" and "list of hats" are pretty important.

Really enjoying the game so far! It seems to be set in the actual wild west while also adopting many elements of KoL's world. Do KoL and WoL exist in the same universe, or are they part of the greater Loathing Multiverse?

Also, would you consider releasing an expansion for West of Loathing if there's enough demand?

Congrats on the launch! Been excited for this game since before it had a name!

We always had this kind of vague idea that KoL's "Distant Lands" was the American west, so... let's just say that's canon.

We do have some DLC planned. New areas and quests and items and monsters and stuff. I'm really excited to dig into working on it (after the team takes a little breather.)

Congrats on launch!

I know you joke a lot about how much you hate Word Realms, but what do you think was the most important lesson that you carried forward to West of Loathing?

In our decade and a half of working together on KoL, we've really learned where our strengths and weaknesses are, and built up KoL's tools to allow us to create a ton of content very quickly.

The backend tools for Word Realms made it a real struggle to quickly iterate on things and try out goofy ideas, which made it really difficult to do what we're good at.

WoL's tools were built with this in mind, and allowed us to make a huge game in a reasonably short amount of time.

Hi Jick! Long time KoLer here. West of Loathing looks amazing; I just bought (and installed) the game, as well as the Mr. Store item, and can't wait to play.

As for my question, what was your fondest memory over the course of making WoL? What was your worst?

Here's to a successful release!

I think my favorite memory is of showing the game to the public for the first time, at some small event in the Bay area. When I saw people who had no idea what KoL was consistently enjoying WoL, I began to suspect that what we were making was pretty good.

It is honestly really difficult to come up with a worst memory. I can't remember a single serious disagreement the team had about anything. Oh, and at no point did I accidentally delete half of the game, so that's cool. It has been a joy to make this thing and I hope people get some joy out of playing it.

Hey Jick. Just wanted you and the Asym crew to know that KoL has been nothing but an awesome and important experience of my life over the last decade. Hopefully the donations and my purchase of WoL has been enough for you guys to afford a beer or two on me. Cheers!

I'm having difficulties making a pitch for friends that don't understand why they* would play WoL when they can play AAA titles. I keep telling them "it'll be hilarious, I promise", but i don't think its working. How do you suggest I sell them the game?

EDIT Typooooos

That has always been a real challenge for us. It's pretty easy to bounce off of our stuff right away if it doesn't immediately catch you. And that's fine. We're comfortable in a niche.

One thing that definitely helps is user reviews, and social media signal boosting -- retweeting our tweets and re-whatevering our Facebook posts, that kind of thing. Maybe you can't get your friends to play it, but you can get SOMEBODY'S friends to play it.

Who did the voices for the horses? I swear I can hear HotStuff in there. EDIT: oh god, every time I go to search a spittoon the fact that the game tries to talk me out of it is the BEST. Especially loving that I got to tell the game to BITE ME in the silversmith's house.

I think there's a little bit of all of us in the Crazy Horse's ambient loop.

Hi Jick,

In west of loathing, you start each combat with max HP and action points. This makes combat so much more fun. What was the design decision behind that?

It just felt more accessible. In a game where you actually have to spend time getting back to town (as opposed to KoL) it seemed like it'd probably be pretty annoying to have to manually stay healed up.

Now that West of Loathing is out the door will podcast listeners get their KoL podcast back?

Thanks for the great games - I look forward to the IotM every month, and potential DLC for WoL!

Yeah, I hope so. I also hope to stop eating like a garbage person and to start exercising again. So we'll see.

I bought the game the moment it came into my inbox and I can't wait to play it.

1. Do you think your company's future is in more games set in the Loathing universe, or are you looking to another "IP"?
2. What is the engine WoL runs on? How did you select it considering your prior experience in building a web game?

1) I'd love to do both. But the engine and pipeline we've got are pretty optimized for stuff that looks like Loathing, so probably a few more years of that first.

2) It's written in Unity, but the Unity game is really more like an engine itself -- we don't actually create the content in Unity's editor, we create it in our own tools, and the executable takes all of that data and builds the scenes from it.

What would you say, looking back, is the thing you would have least expected to be doing nearly fifteen years after launching KoL?

(For the record, my pick would be seeing you with short hair.)

Honestly, still making video games for a living. Past me would not believe how ridiculous the ride has been.

When do you anticipate an iOS release of WoL? I'm in the dust until then.

PS, fanboying right now, nothing that hasn't been said

-beware the gorvunculus

We keep telling people 2 or 3 months. I sincerely hope that this is the truth.

Any plans for an HD rerelease of Quest for Schlitz?

I'm not sure I'd be able to track down high-res versions of the images I used. I think they predate Google Image Search.

Maybe a sequel, though...

Personally, I'm waiting for a krakrox re release

I would actually love to do this. Now that we're finished with WoL and can look forward to decades of leisurely champagne on the beach, maybe I'll get around to participating the next 7-day Roguelike competition.

I'd just like to say that the interstate 19 rest stop was perfect and relaxing.

Yeah, that level is probably the most KoL thing I made prior to making KoL.

What about a new Jungle Raoul? I love that little symbol and was happy to change his color in TXTWORLD.

See that's how you can tell Jim and I were always destined to be friends.

Yay, Jick! What was the hardest part about creating west of loathing? What's your favorite joke in it?

The hardest part was the last 10% of the work, which turned out to be the last 90% of the work.

As for my favorite joke, I don't want to straight up spoil it because it involves a bunch of hidden things colliding for you to find it, but there's a bit involving Hamlet's soliloquy that is probably my favorite thing Riff has ever written.

Will there be additional DLC for WoL in the future or is the horse armor the only DLC we're going to get?

There will be more. That part of the map labeled the Desolate Lonesome Coast is there for a reason.

Hi Jick, Why did you decide to price this game at $11?

We were set on $20 dollars for a long time, but a lot of industry people we trust cautioned us against it. We took their advice, for a couple of reasons.

1) If you don't already know us, it doesn't look like a $20 game. I think it IS a $20 game, based on how much stuff there is in it, but it's hard to show that to a random new person.

2) A ~$10 price point makes it a much, much easier impulse buy. We started believing we'd be able to hit the Steam Top Sellers chart at launch (which we have,) and were told over and over again that if there's a ten dollar game in that list, a ton of people will buy it who wouldn't buy it at twenty.

We'll see how it works out!

Are there going to be Steam Achievements for West of Loathing? Because that's going to be a huge determining factor in whether I buy the game.

There are! And we almost tested all of them!

Just kidding. DanBob got every single achievement during the beta, so they're definitely all hooked up correctly and nothing is on fire.

Will there also be a steam badge? I already have two of the cards.

Yep! You can't make cards without a badge.

When I attended the 2015 Convention, I was told by some long-time players that you don't like strangers coming up and trying to talk to you, so don't do it. I awkwardly and sadly avoided saying Hi and briefly letting you know how much I appreciate KoL because of that, and it's bothered me a bit ever since. Were those people right in advising me to not talk to you????

Aww, I don't mean to give that impression. I'm just shy and I just get embarrassed easily.

Next time you get a chance, definitely say hi.

Heeey Jick! Do you think WoL is accessible to people who have never played KoL? im a longtime player but my girlfriend wants to try it out and shes never touched KoL before. is there any mechanics that might not click or things that might be harder to grasp?

We've tried really hard to not put anything in there, mechanically or narratively, that would be impenetrable to somebody who doesn't know KoL.

If members of the video game hot dog podcast were to suddenly break out in a brawl, who would rise as the victor? My money's on Riff "get a whiff" Rifflesby.

I suspect that if the chips were really down, Jim would abandon the thin veneer of civilization and fight real, real dirty.

Is there a connection between cows and seals?

Only in the sense that we never did get to the point where we stopped accidentally referring to Cow Punchers as Seal Clubbers.

Cows are from Hell, Seals are from the Infernal Abyss. On sale now at your local Waldenbooks.

Hey Jick. I played KoL for hours and hours and hours way back when (pre (and post) NS-13). Every now and then I get the itch to pick it back up again, but knowing how ridiculously deep and complicated the game was back then (at least the way I chose to play it) and how much more complicated it's certainly gotten in the last ~10 years, I can never justify the time commitment to jump back in. How much do you worry about this in your continued development of KoL?

It's a constant worry, but I think it's kind of inevitable. It'll be nice to get back into more active KoL development now that we're done with WoL. Making something designed to be accessible to new audiences will surely give us new perspective on how to spruce up KoL.

Sorry to fanboy out, I can't believe you're doing an AMA, Jick! Absolutely loved Kingdom of Loathing, defintely has a place on my top seven MMO's of all time, really been looking forward to diving into West of Loathing. Anyway my question is about the stick figure aesthetic. It's pretty clear that there are some talented artists working on your games, so was going with stick figures a style choice from the beginning of development, or were there some practical concerns with producing the art for these games? Love the style, so psyched you're doing this, my guildies are gonna FREAK!!!

It was definitely a limitation at first, since the very first iteration of KoL was a one-man operation. It was programmed as well as I could program (not super well,) administrated as well as I could sysadmin (not super well,) and drawn as well as I could draw (indescribably well.)

You've previously mentioned that you prefer "small numbers" RPGs (I think in VGHD), but I was wondering, at which point do you feel a game becomes a "big numbers" RPG? And if a game starts with small numbers but transitions to big numbers, do you feel like you enjoy the beginning more for that reason?

Umm, 50, maybe? And yeah, I think I always enjoy the earlier combats in an RPG more than the later ones. Notable exceptions where it stayed fun for me throughout are:

1) Paper Mario 2) Transistor 3) Devil's Attorney (an iOS game that you should definitely check out if you like our stuff.)

Do you think having the Avatar of West of Loathing path in KoL happen a year before WoL was released was a marketing mistake or do you think it helped generate interest and let people know it was a thing that was going to exist?

I'm not sure. In part, it was just to get us in the mode of writing and designing that kind of content. I think the people who really love KoL were always going to follow us to a new project, and so the really important marketing and promotion stuff happened externally.

Congratulations on the launch!

On a recent KoL Podcast, you were discussing how you have been less angry about development in recent years. There certainly were some significant arguments in the podcast’s past. You also seemed to be relating this to how ‘punk rock’ KoL was compared to this new game.

How are those two changes related in your mind, or am I misunderstanding your comparison?

I’m a huge fan of your work. I actually only got deeply into KoL last year, but have loved going through your past episodes. Like Maro’s Drive to Work, there’s a lot to learn from someone who’s been creating one game as long as you have. Thanks so much for being so open about your development process.

As a huge Mark Rosewater fan, I find that comparison tremendously flattering.

As for the mellowing over time, I think it's probably all related to getting older, and trying to become less arrogant and self-absorbed.

Hey Jick, I loved the dwarven factory puzzle in KoL, and almost all of the puzzles in KoL.

What is your favorite puzzle in West of Loathing, or the puzzle you're most proud of?

Almost all of the puzzles in both KoL and WoL are Riff and Kevin's babies. (Riff did the KoL dwarf puzzle, and Kevin did all the ones you haven't solved (or even found) yet.)

My favorite WoL puzzle is probably the one Kevin made for the military cemetery.

Hey Jick no questions just wanted to say thanks for years of entertainment. I've been playing KoL every day since 2006, loved Word Realms and I'm already enjoying West of Loathing a lot. I made a lot of good friends on KoL and even met my wife there, so thanks for everything you've done for me over the years without even knowing it, or me. *Edit they removed my post because I didn't ask a question, soo my question is Where's the soap?

It's in the bathtub.

Hey, Jick!

As someone who loved(and beta tested) Word Realms, and understands fully why you may not, I have a pressing question. Will we ever get any expansion on the incredible amount of cool lore that Word Realms had? I'm totally okay with a completely different game style with the same setting, but the world and its people were damn interesting, and it's a shame to let them rot.

I also wanted to thank you and the Asymmetric team for entertaining me for what my anniversary gifts tell me must be at least eleven years now. That's ridiculous.

Yeah, I'm kinda sad we didn't get to explore that world. Maybe someday. I think we still have the internal wiki articles. Maybe one of these days I'll see how hard it'd be to format those for public consumption and stick 'em up on the company website.

I currently find myself unemployed with a decent cash reserve and am considered spending some time trying to become and indie game dev. I'm not under any delusions I'll create the next Binding of Isaac in the next couple years, and I'm financially stable enough that I don't actually need to be turning a profit for at least a couple years (maybe longer), but it'd be nice to at least make something resembling a living wage. Am I completely wasting my time? Any advice you'd give for somebody in my position?

The market is crowded and gets more crowded by the day. We were very fortunate to have an existing fan base to draw on. It's a scary scene without a safety net.

Hey Jick, I'm a big fan, excited to play West of Loathing when I get home from work. What do you think the best joke you ever wrote for KoL was?

Probably the description for the coffin lid? Or maybe the giant heirloom grape tomato? I'll leave finding these as an exercise for the reader.

Hi Jick! So there was a website way back yonder in the days of 56k that was a time killer for me called stickdeath.com. I always wondered if you were inspired by this or just a coincidence?

Not really. I think those early Flash stick figure combat games and movies were more about the dynamism that you could express with the simplicity of that art style, whereas for me it was just an easy way to put some wallpaper on a game that's fundamentally about the writing.

Hi Jick! If aliens came to destroy earth, and you were the only hope to prevent them from doing so, what would you do to convince them to not kill us all?

Also, hotdog - sandwich or no?

Hot dogs are technically a soup.

Can you add key rebinding to wol?

At the very least, we're planning on adding a toggle to support QWERTY, AZERTY and Dvorak in an early patch.

Why does http://westofloathing.com/ have no title and no favicon?

Because despite being a web developer for like 20 years, I am still very very bad at web development!

Is KoL set before or after West of Loathing in the canon Loathing Timeline?

Time is a flat circle.

Will there be any crossover bonuses for playing both Kingdom of Loathing and West of Loathing?

We were a little limited in what we could do. We initially intended to sell a KoL item through a piece of Steam DLC, but Steam (for pretty obvious reasons in retrospect) doesn't want you to do that.

So yeah, there's a promo item for sale in KoL right now that unlocks West of Loathing's horses for your KoL character, and gives you a Steam key for some cool WoL horse armor.

Horses in WoL never enter into combat.

Hey Jick! You got plans for an expansion to WoL? I've only owned the game a couple of hours, but I really don't want to run out of it any time soon. :D

Oh well, if you do you will, and if you don't you won't, and until you do, maybe I'll try playing as another class once I'm done with this one.

Yeah, we've got DLC hopes and caviar dreams.

What legendary are you most excited to open out of KFT?

(Really excited to get home and play WoL tonight!!!)

The Lich King and Valeera the Hollow seem like the most fun.

I got the Druid Hero card from the prologue and opened Blood-Queen Lana'thel so far.

Nice! I'm def excited to jam the Lich King into all of my mid range and control decks. I'm really interested in the Priest DK but I promised myself I'd try making a deck out of which ever DK I get from the prologue while I wait for my friends to show up tomorrow so we can all crack packs and brew together.

Opened a Valeera! Huzzah.

Hey Jick! Long time fan, KoL was my first ever online community and still very precious to me.

One of the concepts that I've found so interesting about KoL was the Heart/Spade/Club/Diamond player archetype concept. That appealing to people who like to discover secrets, hang out with their friends, compete with them, and have rare/limited collections is the secret to making a game that anyone can find something enjoyable in.

How much has this concept applied to your development of WoL? I know as a single-player experience the Clubs/Hearts are a bit underemphasized, but have you consciously thought of this structure while developing?

I think having thought of KoL that way for so long makes us naturally gravitate towards designing content for the spade (explorer) and diamond (achiever) archetypes without really having to think about it. And yeah, like you say, there's not much for killers or socializers to do in a single-player game.

Would you be willing to release a graph of registered users over time, and or daily active users?

The graph of registrations over time is an axis nightmare because of the occasional 10,000% spike due to a KoL post hitting the front page of Reddit.

We have a lot of data, though, and nothing to hide. After the dust settles from WoL, hit me up on Twitter and I'll post whatever graph you want to see.

Several questions:

How are you able to keep cranking out new Items of the month?

Are you planning on doing more world events for KOL in the near future?

MOST IMPORTANTLY Can I get Kitty Abundance's autograph?

A little over a year ago, we moved from the old model, where I personally did most of the work on every Item-of-the-Month, to a rotating model where each of the remaining KoL team members does one every four months. It has made it so, so much easier.

Well, easier for me. I guess it did that by making it slightly harder for the other guys.

Hi Jick! Is the price of WoL on purpose, so that it's ridiculous (ly cheap) it's not even funny?

Yeah, definitely.

I haven't been able to catch up on episodes of Video Games Hotdog, would you be able to summarize the past 100 episodes in less 100 words?

Here's an outline. * fart joke * fart joke * Zack was terrible at the assignment game * Riff didn't play it * fart joke

Which part of game creation do you like the least? Best?

I like sitting down with a piece of paper and a pen and sketching out the initial idea for a new area or encounter.

I don't so much like the hours and hours and hours of filling in the details to make that sheet of paper into something playable.

Will there be any controller support or 21:9 / 2560x1080 resolution? It's cool if not. I imagine a whole new aspect ratio would break so much of the board layouts.

Unholy cow was I excited for this game to launch! I used to play KoL back in the pre-Ascension days, when I was just in highschool. I recommend everyone play in Best Font Mode for that classic flavor.

Yeah, controller support is definitely on our internal 1.1 wishlist. All of the UI was designed with the possibility of eventual console ports in mind, so it won't be THAT hard. I say, as NOT the guy whose job it is to write the code.

You can play it with a Steam Controller now. It's not great, but it's doable.

What drink would you pair with West of Loathing?

A beer mug filled with whiskey.

There was a Gamasutra article where you mentioned that simple things like just having a character move around was unexplored territory and how Wes nailed the combat animations. What was the most challenging aspect to make a game of this type feel KoLish and was there any big feature/gag/etc you had to scrap in WoL that would have worked in KoL?

edit: I'll add a KoL question on here just because: like any long living game there have been some mistakes made both big and small (more like Blank Out being obscenely overpowered, not an accident like the server drop on White Wednesday.) If you could have one redo on KoL content/events/etc what would it be and why.

One of the nice things about WoL still being so text-heavy is that if we want to get a joke in there that we don't have the resources to animate, we can always just do it in dialog and it won't seem like a cop-out.

Well, maybe it won't. I hope it won't.

The main thing I wish we had done differently with KoL is that I wish we hadn't deleted inactive accounts for the first few years. I think we lost a lot of people that way.

What are you planning for iOS price point? will you keep it the same as on PC or lower it to fit in better with the mobile market?

This is an excellent question, and I would love nothing more than for somebody else to answer it for us so we can stop worrying about it. :)

Now that you have a well oiled and newly expanded team at Asymmetric, what sort of games should we expect in the future? Do you expect to stay in the Loathing universe of games indefinitely?

The ideas we've been tossing around for the next one have us all really excited. Unless we change our minds, it's set 33 years after WoL, and further east.

So... exciting games. That's what you should expect.

Was there any inspiration from the Idle Thumbs guys on West of Loathing since you are in the same office?

One day I may get around to actually buying you guys tacos and beer, but for today I'll just buy your game. Looking forward to it!

We told him to make sure the game was good and he took our advice.

We just told you we took your advice. Secretly we made it bad.

How many time zones are there in loathing?

There are two things you don't talk about.

What’s a good book similar to Tim Powers’s work, probably “Anubis Gates” most of all?

Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency.