Who is Exotic Cancer and how did the name come about?
Exotic Cancer is my artist pseudonym and business name. The name itself is a playful twist on the term "Exotic Dancer," which reflects the origins of my work, centred around my experiences as a stripper.
What kind of tabletop game is Nightshift and how did your lived experience shape it?
Nightshift aims to immerse players into the role of a dancer. The game board is a birds-eye-view of a club, where players, using a combination of action points, dice, cards, and tokens, entice customers and earn money. Drawing directly from my experiences, the game intricately mirrors the dynamics of working in a club including trade-offs in how to spend your time and energy, engaging with customers, and being rostered on stage. Through gameplay, I aim to highlight deeper themes such as the legitimacy of sex work and the complex balance of competition and collaboration among dancers.
Why a tabletop game as the medium to tell this story?
I think encouraging players to think and act from the perspective of a dancer is much more powerful than just telling them what it is like. Tabletop games present the unique ability for a group to share a journey through their collective imagination, while still maintaining some agency over exactly how it unfolds. I think this active engagement makes it really powerful for storytelling and building empathy.
I am also really excited by the potential to reach audiences who may not be familiar with my art or the world of stripping. It’s been amazing to see play testers get into character and embrace the world of Nightshift, and we’ve had some fascinating unprompted conversations with play testers on subjects like whether or not the industry is exploitative.
What are the character traits of the five dancers in the game?
In Nightshift, each dancer specialises in one of five traits: Compassion, Ego, Fun, Intellect, and Fantasy, which are the desirable qualities to customers within the game. These traits are deeply integrated into the dancers' backstories and special abilities, influencing how they interact with customers and navigate the game's challenges. This also helps them win over customers with a preference for their trait.
A core theme of the game is that strong connections with customers (resulting in significant payoff) require Dancers to appeal to each of the five desires without pushing it too far and breaking the illusion.
Customer characters have unique qualities that can be exploited or hinder. Presumably, while obviously any resemblance between the characters in this game and any persons, living or dead is purely coincidental, there have been situations that have inspired these profiles.
Most of the characters in the game are inspired by various experiences and interactions I've encountered during my time as a dancer, adding depth and realism to the gameplay. A small number of real people directly feature in the game, and they have all consented to their likeness being used.
Your artwork is grotesquely funny and pulls back the curtain to a reality that most people won’t see. What compelled you to start drawing this world?
Despite my club persona, I’m naturally very introverted and observant. Drawing has always been my chosen form of expression, allowing me to articulate thoughts and observations that I might otherwise struggle to share. I believe some things are better expressed through visuals, not words.
Exotic Cancer’s Instagram channel now has over 600,000 followers. Was there a particular point when you noticed it take off?
When I began around 2017 I was producing new artwork daily and received a really positive response to intertwining my life as a dancer with my passion for art. This period of intense creativity and openness with my audience helped to build a strong following, resonating both with dancing veterans and those curious to see behind-the-scenes. My art has developed over time to include products, animations, and cover broader unsettling/dystopian themes.
The Full Moon mechanic in the game that triggers ‘strange events’. Is this actually a thing? Do things get weirder in strip clubs on a Full Moon?
Superstitions about the full moon and its effects on patrons are really common in strip club culture! This feature in the game adds an element of unpredictability and excitement, mirroring the nature of a night at the club.
What’s your own history with tabletop gaming? Have you always played them and do you have any particular favourites, or any that provided inspiration for Nightshift?
I’ve always had a soft spot for tabletop gaming and am typically a bit of a chaotic / troublemaking player. I personally love games with high levels of player interaction and often gravitate towards social deduction games. Betrayal at House on the Hill and D&D were key initial inspirations for navigating a world as a group. I also love the thrill and hype of games like Pass The Pigs, and the push-your-luck style made a lot of sense to me within Nightshift as it closely aligns with my experiences of customers.
You mention on the game’s website that the game “aims to challenge stigma and empower this often misunderstood profession through promoting empathy”. What do you hope gamers will get out of playing Nightshift and how will they get this sense of understanding?
We’ve encouraged people to adopt the dancer’s perspective as much as possible. The game focuses on building connections with customers, managing your time wisely and navigating the politics of the club. I haven’t included any nudity because stripping is so much more than just taking your clothes off, and I don’t want that to be the focus. This approach is empowering because it allows uninformed audiences to see stripping in the same light as other jobs and allows them to empathise with some of the challenges you face in the industry.
What’s been the response from gamers?
Pretty polarising! Views seem to range from Nightshift representing the root of all evil and the end of board games as a respectable genre, to recognising it as an exciting, innovative and progressive evolution.
What’s particularly rewarding is observing how players' perceptions change after they engage with the game. Many have been positively caught off guard by the depth and replayability – they appear to go in expecting the board game equivalent of a penis straw and leave with deep reflections about whether they prioritised customer loyalty enough when building out their online subscribers.
I can think of more board games where the playable characters are medieval farmers or elves or anthropomorphic penguins than those played from the viewpoint of a stripper. That’s fairly weird isn’t it, considering that strip clubs exist in most cities around the world and have a big imprint in movies and TVs? Why is this?
Unlike literature, plays and film, board games have historically been understood as either for children or families (see for example the Spiel des Jahres category definitions). By comparison, the 18+ category is highly underdeveloped and arguably barely recognised. Even within the adult category, sex work is especially challenging. Many people find the subject inherently immoral/unacceptable and it arguably demands a voice from within the community to carry the authenticity and care required.
While other challenging themes like conquest and slavery are rife in board games, these themes have been entwined with the genre dating all the way back to ancient wargaming practices in many cultures. I think this element of tradition has reduced the level of scrutiny and criticism of these themes, however recently this subject appears to be gaining more recognition and awareness.
From your experiences as a designer and a player, are there any aspects of the board gaming industry that you’d like to see improve? What could be done to improve it, if so?
I think crowdfunding has already done a lot to improve the industry by showing passion and support for innovation and new ideas. Something I have found disappointing is the prevalence of prescriptive and exclusionary views about what board games must necessarily look like. The board game community has historically been rather conservative, and many people suggest to me that Nightshift could only ever be for a niche audience within a niche market—some people even suggest re-skinning the game to be about bards in a tavern or the property market. Multiple people have even commented that they’d “boycott any game shop that sells Nightshift”. Can you imagine applying that logic to a bookstore? I appreciate that everyone has their own taste in genre but it’d be ridiculous to boycott a bookstore that chooses to stock adult books.