We recently connected with Del Blackwater and have shared our conversation below.

Alright, Del thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. Can you talk to us about a project that’s meant a lot to you?

As a young person, I spent far too many years riddled with social anxiety. It never stopped me from spending time with my friends, but there can be no doubt that it was a huge weight on my shoulder well into my thirties. Somehow, I spent enough time on the periphery that I eventually attracted the attentions of my polar opposite – a gregarious and fashionable person who was a bit of a local legend both for his excellent taste in music and for his lifestyle choices.

In the days leading up to our first date, I was often paralyzed with a very specific phobia. What would happen when we organically ran out of conversation? What then? I die alone? I have mentioned I never actually let my social anxiety stop me. Here, too, I took the plunge as always and invited this local celebrity into my home. The phobia, as it turns out, was valid, and we organically ran out of conversation a couple hours into the evening.

My mouth spoke without me, asking him, “Playlist Wars?”

“Is that a game?” he asked.

Why, yes. In that moment, a very primitive version of a game was born. There were not yet props, or a board, or rules, but the gist of it was, you pick the first musical selection of the evening. I’ll pick the next. And in this way, we can carry on, regardless of what else is happening around us.

The rest, as they say, is history. After a couple months of experimentation, I knew I had something really special and it was something that could change the way people socialize.

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.

I’m Del Blackwater, creator of the board game Playlist Wars. I am now several years into my game design journey, and can say without flinching that I found something the world needed. There’s a myriad of fun board games out there, but very few of them will change the way you live and interact with other people.

Playlist Wars is a way of listening to music. It ensures that everyone has an equal crack at the soundtrack, and it ensures a certain amount of chaos. In one evening, a jazz aficionado can be forced to select a heavy metal track, a multi-generational family might have to endure the vast differences in their respective musical tastes, or a person who considers themselves musically savvy might find that selecting music for the room is very different than selecting music for oneself.

It’s the sort of organized chaos that distinguishes ordinary social events from extraordinary ones. I have seen people moved to tears by the musical selections of others. I have seen entire groups of people break into song. I have seen rock ‘n roll lead to Arabic language music, seemingly with no rhyme or reason, other than the flow of the evening always seems to have its own agenda, and when you bring any group of people together, things will inevitably unfold in surprising ways.

We often hear about learning lessons – but just as important is unlearning lessons. Have you ever had to unlearn a lesson?

Creativity can be a thankless task. You can spend years of your life developing a project, only to watch it fail. And that, thankfully, is where we learn the most valuable lesson of all: perseverance. Projects in their infancy will fail if you give up. By contrast, when you can let go of the numbers game, and start quantifying success in other ways, you can change the world. Instead of asking, how many copies did I sell this quarter? Ask yourself, how many people have I met because of my senseless devotion to this niche project of mine? Have I changed my own life? Have I changed the lives of others? The answer might surprise you.

For you, what’s the most rewarding aspect of being a creative?

Knowing that I changed the way people interact with one another makes the journey worthwhile to me. There is no such thing as a dull moment when you bring people together for a communal love of music. The specific music changes from player to player and moment to moment. But watching the looks on people’s faces when they hear a song they haven’t heard in years, or watching people let go of their inhibitions because it’s more important to honor the beat? Those are truly priceless moments.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.thegamecrafter.com/games/playlist-wars1
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/DelBlackwater/

Image Credits

All images by Del Blackwater