Scott Swanson
Of The New Era
Life was going decently for Bubba Junior until he weighed himself at the feed store and accidentally broke the industrial scale.
That’s when things started to go downhill. First, he lit a match in the bathroom and, well, his “Rectangular Estates” 30-foot trailer exploded. Lost the trailer and had to move into his rig. Then he got caught playing Mailbox Baseball. Cost him another $120. Then he tried to moon his cousin while he was driving his rig and lost a tooth.
The Day of Reckon’n was closin’ in and Bubba was in a fix. He knew he was gonna have to sell the rig and pay off as many of his Check N’ Scram payday advances as he could. Had plenty of those suckers because his attendant’s job at the ciggy shack didn’t exactly pay big dividends.
But right about then, just when it looked like his ma-in-law was gonna move in (which would have cost him an extra $50 a month in beer and ciggies), he hit the jackpot.
His cousin Dottie Sue won $2 million in a Powerball jackpot and Bubba embezzled half of it.
Just another fine day in the game of Redneck Life.
“Redneck Life” really is a game, the brainchild of Sweet Home High School alum Lisa (Bowman) Steenson, class of ’78, and her friend Lori Dieda, a Somerset, Ky., resident.
Steenson, 47, who lives in the Battle Ground, Wash., area, and Dieda, 45, got to know each other when they were neighbors in Salt Lake City, Utah, while Steenson’s husband was a pilot in the Marines. During a visit, they came up with the idea for a new game that, Steenson said, is based in part on some memories of Sweet Home, where she grew up.
One game card has a photo of her childhood home, on Highway 228, and another shows demolition-derby cars parked outside a local business.
Steenson attended school at Long Street School (now the school district administration building) and Holley School, as well as junior high and high school in Sweet Home, where she played volleyball, basketball and competed in track and field. She made the all-league first team in basketball, she noted, proudly.
“I still get Christmas cards from Coach (Ron) Pike,” she said.
She earned a bachelor’s degree in physical education at Oregon State University and married Wayne Steenson, who flew Harrier jets. They “moved around a lot,” she said, and she taught P.E. and “did a lot of coaching” – volleyball and basketball – along the way.
When Wayne retired from the Marines, they settled down in the Battle Ground area in 1997, from where he flies for Delta and for the Oregon Air National Guard out of Salem. The Steensons have three daughters, Raina, 23; Jill, 21; and Lauren, 18.
Lisa Steenson was running a flag and windsock business when she and Dieda brainstormed their way to the new game.
It was February 2004 and the Iraq War had just broken out. Wayne Steenson was in Kuwait, flying.
Lisa Steenson was visiting Dieda in Somerset and they were bored – plus, Steenson said, she was a little stressed about the war – so they decided to go to Wal-Mart and buy a game.
“I was just amazed at this Super Wal-Mart in Somerset because the parking lot was a huge party,” she said. Because neighboring counties are dry, people go to Somerset to buy booze, she said.
“People were drinking in the parking lot and smoking. We were there to buy a game, but we said, ‘Gosh, let’s make a game,'” Steenson said.
They started out writing ideas on index cards. Their first 12 versions of the game were glued to posterboards. That’s how long it took, she said, before they decided they were ready to hire a professional artist to create the images and graphics that adorn the game.’
What they came up with was a game for two to six players who, the creators recommend, should be over 13 since “Redneck Life” can get a little racy. (You can, for instance, choose to save 50 percent on the cost of your divorce by, er, sleeping with the lawyer. Word of warning: Sleeping with the lawyer can come back to haunt you.)
“There’s nothing crude – no cussing,” Steenson said. “It’s just kind of the lifestyle. We did have one church group that played it. That was kind of scary.”
Players have to roll dice to find out what name they’re going to have – such as Johnny Lee or Jebidiah James or, for female players, a similar combination of names like Betty, Wynona, Bertha, Faye, Louise, Jane, etc. Players roll again to get a career – which is based strictly on what grade they’ve finished – 2 through 12. Career possibilities range from honey bucket engineer (for those who’ve finished second grade) to mullet salon operator (11th grade) and the ultimate – shop teacher/wrestling coach (12th grade).
Players also must buy a rig (sometimes more, depending on how many young ‘ens they have to transport) and a home.
Paydays are generally an opportunity to pay down one’s debt, which is incurred by buying vehicles from Uncle Clem’s Rig Rodeo and a home on credit, but may also be influenced by divorces, marriages, lawsuits, and how many young ‘ens a player has.
The object of the game is to retain as many teeth as possible as “Redneck Life” progresses. Players can lose teeth to potholes, fights, or other messy situations. The player with the most teeth at the Day of Reckon’n wins. It’s that simple.
Steenson and Dieda sent their final version off to the printer and got it back just in time to take it to their first game show.
They initially laminated the board and rolled it up – “beer-proof boards,” they called them.
They took their game to a Gen-Con So-Cal game convention in Anaheim, Calif. Since they weren’t sure if they would have their finished product in time, they hadn’t rented a booth. There, in the midst of 7,000 game enthusiasts, they sold out of all the completed games they’d brought and went back for more.
“We did some demos and did so well that we made the rest of them up,” Steenson said.
“We made them in the motel room,” Dieda added.
They collated their first 1,000 games on the ping-pong table, Steenson said.
“Child labor is an excellent thing,” she joked.
Their company, Gut Bustin’ Games, has sold more than 8,000 editions of “Redneck Life” and has produced an expansion supplement that includes new cards and more amazing rigs and homes, many of them from photos submitted by people who’ve played the original game.
“Now we’re ordering (games) in batches of 10,000, ” Steenson said.
When they took “Redneck Life” to the huge Indianapolis Gen-Con convention last July, where 25,000 game players gather, 600 signed up to play and Steenson and Dieda sold out.
They also hosted a World Championship Spam Carving Contest at Indianapolis.
“That got a lot of attention, Steenson said. “The aroma was overwhelming.”
Games seem to be particularly popular in Indiana, where the faithful have formed a Redneck Life Fan Club, she said.
“Redneck Life” also was named the top game at the 2006 Toy and Game Industry Conference and the editor of Greater Games Industry Catalogue has proclaimed it his favorite game.
“Redneck Life” sells for $28 and the expansion version, which doesn’t include the board and pieces, runs $15. In Sweet Home, they’re sold at Santiam Feed and Garden Center, Steenson said.
She noted that she got the idea for the broken industrial scale episode in her game from when she would run into Santiam Feed as a child and weigh herself and her friends on the store’s big scale.
Steenson and Dieda said their game isn’t sold in big chain stores – though those stores have come calling – because they want too much of a price cut to carry the game.
It is mostly sold by smaller retailers who specialize in games, Dieda said.
The pair have another game in the works, “Trailer Park Wars,” which will involve more strategy, Steenson said. It is expected to be released in early 2008.
“Trailer Park Wars” gives players “the chance to live the dream” to be the “best darn trailer park manager in town” by attracting quality tenants, creating a fun and friendly atmosphere and destroying the other trailer parks – no matter what it takes. There are also 100 pink flamingoes involved but you can discover what that’s all about on your own.
“I want to maintain the same level of fun as “Redneck Life,” but this is a different game,” Steenson said recently as she and Dieda paid a visit to Bob’s Sporting Goods in Longview, Wash., one of their dealers.
The new game will not be board-based; rather, players will use cards that will feature photos of mobile homes ranging from “extra fancy” to “cosmetically impaired,” she said. Players will collect pink flamingos as points and when the last of the 100 flamingos is gone, the player with the most wins.
Final artwork on “Trailer Park Wars” is in progress and it is being tested by game enthusiasts and developers, such as Jeffrey Bellinger, who created “Killer Bunnies.”
“One of the hardest parts with games you want the general public to play is to develop instructions that are very understandable,” Steenson said.
Dealers say “Redneck Life” has proven immensely popular with customers.
“After running a single demonstration of (“Redneck Life”) at my main store, every person who played requested a copy of the game,” said Jim Destromp, president of Atomic Comics Emporium, a chain of stores in Virginia. “We have been in business for 20 years and have not experienced a response such as this.”
Destromp said three of the distributors he buys from were out of stock when he tried to buy more games.
Lorrie Peterson, owner of Dillon’s Bookstore in Prineville, said the “Redneck Life” was her single best-selling item for 2006 – and she didn’t start selling it until May.
“To be quite honest, I did not expect the game to do what it did,” Peterson said. “Customers walk in and say ‘Where is that “Redneck” game? We played it the other night at a friend’s and I want my own.'”
Peterson said she has also increased sales by selling redneck-themed books, comedy CDs and other items.
Other retailers say the same thing – that they can’t keep the game on their shelves.
Game players, including some very serious gamers, also write frequently and send suggestions, Steenson and Dieda say.
“The serious gamers will play their game for hours and hours, then they’ll take a break and they’ll drink a soda and play this to laugh a little and unwind, ” Steenson said.
She said she didn’t expect this kind of success when she started, but she knew she had a winner early on.
“It seemed like something fun to pursue,” she said, adding that it’s given her something to pursue that gets her out of isolation – especially when her husband is gone flying for a week at a time and her daughters are in school. Her flag business, she said, is mostly Internet-based, so she doesn’t have to leave home for that.
“Where I live, I’m so far out of town – 20 miles through a campground, up a gravel road – without a lot of neighbors, it gives Lori and I a good reason to go places, to these conventions.”
“It just kind of helps my life be more three-dimensional,” she said. “It helps me to have something else going on. It’s just a lot of fun.”