On Friday I eagerly arrived at my friendly local game store (FLGS), Fortuna Games in St. Louis, at opening time. I was there in the hopes of getting a few Disney Lorcana starter decks so Megan and I could play over the weekend. I was delighted (and a little surprised) to find a line out […]
Public speaking makes me incredibly nervous and anxious, but fortunately I found that doesn’t carry over to speaking on live video (like my weekly Facebook livecast). Still, I have a lot of respect and admiration for those with the courage and eloquence to stand up in front of a crowd to speak. Our diversity, equity, […]
With thousands of new games released every year and thousands more reprinted, distributors simply don’t have the sales capacity and warehouse space to pick up every game from every publisher to sell to retailers. This leaves smaller and newer publishers in a difficult situation: They can sell on their own webstores, but they lose out […]
When I was in school, I had a few opportunities to play and design games. Most of the games we played were more like simulations (of the United Nations, of living on Mars, of the electoral system, etc). I have fond memories of one game design assignment in which most groups created your standard roll-and-move […]
Over the last 10 years, I’ve written over 1000 articles on this blog to share my thoughts, observations, mistakes, and insights with my fellow creators. That’s a lot of content to go back and read for someone who is navigating the crowdfunding process for the first time, so in this series I continue to revisit […]
In yesterday’s video I discussed my process of prototyping, playtesting, and developing tabletop games. This is a deep-dive topic, so in addition to posting the video, today I’ll recap each of the different stages/categories in writing. Introduction This is the heart of game design: The idea inception and brainstorming stages are fun, but they’re just […]
Our natural rubber playmats for Tapestry and Scythe–while great for setup and for picking up cards off the surface–have so far been packaged in long cardboard tubes, which present problems for both the environment (lots of unnecessary material) and for customers (other items can’t be consolidated in the same “box”). Fortunately, we found a solution […]
My favorite type of marketing is also perhaps the most difficult to inspire, create, and control: word of mouth. When I hear from a friend (or even a stranger) that they loved a game, book, movie, podcast, blog, YouTube channel, restaurant, band, service, company, etc, it immediately piques my curiosity. Not only did the person […]
What is the best-supported tabletop game of all time? This is an intentionally vague question I posed in yesterday’s Facebook livecast, as it’s a topic I’ve thought about as a top 10 list on our YouTube channel. I’m always fascinated to learn what people mean when they feel like a publisher has done a good […]
A few months ago when Expeditions was in production, I found myself with around 40 “journal entry” pages from the game, and I decided to do something with them to surprise a few people who open their copies. For this to make sense, I need to back up a little to another surprise for everyone […]
