Think Like A Game Designer - Alex Yeager — Mastering Game Pitches, Reviving Evergreen Titles, and Creating Social Experiences in Game Design (#72)

Episode Date: October 8, 2024

About Alex YeagerAlex Yeager joins us on today’s episode to bring his wealth of knowledge and experience from over 20 years in the board game industry. Alex is the Chief Operating Officer at Amigo Games, overseeing the company’s North American operations. Before his time at Amigo, Alex held various leadership roles at renowned companies like Mayfair Games, where he served as Vice President of Acquisition and Development, and Steve Jackson Games, where he contributed significantly to their demo programs. He also has a rich background as an event coordinator and demo leader, helping bring many games to wider audiences.In this episode, Alex shares his journey, from falling in love with tabletop games like Cosmic Encounter and Illuminati to his deep involvement in demoing for Steve Jackson Games and CheapAss Games. He walks us through his innovative 2-2-2 demo method, explains what makes a game pitch successful, and dives into the marketing strategies that can revive evergreen titles like Bonanza. Alex’s insights into game development, pitching, and the mechanics behind building successful games provide a goldmine of advice for designers and developers alike. Enjoy!Want to support the podcast and get more design lessons?Paying subscribers enjoy an abundance of extra game design content and an exclusive newsletter with new lessons, archive access, videos, and more! By opting for a free or paid subscription, you can get the latest articles delivered to your inbox and support this podcast! This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit justingarydesign.substack.com/subscribe

Hello and welcome to Think Like a Game Designer. I'm your host, Justin Gary. In this podcast, I'll be having conversations with brilliant game designers from across the industry with a goal of finding universal principles that anyone can apply in their creative life. You could find episodes and more at think like a game designer.com. In today's episode, I speak with Alex Yeager. Alex is a chief operating officer at Amigo Games. Prior to that, he has also served as event coordinator for Steve Jackson games, had multiple leadership positions at Mayfair games, including vice president of acquisition and development and the director of special media. He has been in the industry for a very long time, over 20 years of experience, and he brings

that to bear in the episode. We talk about a lot of really great things, and because of his unique perspective, we're able to learn a lot. We talk about what makes a great demo and his formula for the 222 demo, how to pitch games to publishers and what publishers decide on how they pick up games and what games they choose to do. We talk about what makes Amigos games so successful and how you build an evergreen game and what are the things that make it most likely to be successful, the importance of the social experience that is the core of what's happening and the ease of transferring the fun.

And we really talk a lot about not just how a game becomes evergreen, but even the marketing efforts to bring back a game that used to be evergreen and then failed and then bring it back to life. Bonanza is a specific case story of this where it was selling tens of thousands of units every year, went basically out of print, how they brought it back, how they brought it back to success. And then, of course, we've been to apply some of that stuff to my own games and the stuff we're doing with bringing all the Ascension sets back to life. And he even gives me a little cool tip that I am 100% using. And you can use with your own games as you expand them and try to build your own Evergreen brand. So tons of great value here. I love Alex. He's one of the kindest people I know.

We've chatted and been friends for a very long time. So it was great to get him finally on the podcast. I know you'll love him as much as I do. So without any further ado, here is Alex Yeager. Hello and welcome. I'm here with Alex Yeager. Alex, so great to finally have it on the podcast. I know. This is terrific. Thanks for having me. Yeah, man. We've had a lot of great chats over the years. You've been around the industry as long as pretty much anybody here. You've got a lot of different experiences that you bring to the background. But I realize that, you know, you'd already kind of, were a veteran here before I kind of got into it. So I don't actually know your full origin story.

So I'd love to know how you got into the space and what kind of started you down this crazy road that you've been on. Yeah, I think the short version, the kind of the long version of the short version, I was playing games through high school, cosmic encounter, and probably Illuminati were my two touchstones through that period. And a lot of yuker, a lot of yuker. but as we came up to 1995, 1996, Steve Jackson Games released a collectible card version of Illuminati

called Illuminati New World Order. And I went down that rabbit hole hard. I have a measurable percentage of the limited edition run of that game in my house. It is a, it was, I was just, just out. absolutely went nuts for the game. And because of that, I got involved with Steve Jackson. Steve Jackson was kind of one of the frontrunner companies that was using, like, digital contacts, using emails and forums to kind of bring people together and to talk about their stuff. So I began, you know, I became part of sort of the Playtest group and some folks that were doing

information out there on that game in particular. And then by extension, some of other Steve Jackson games as well. 97, they started their men in black demo program. I was one of the charter members of that, was very active with that. That got me to shows semi-professionally, which then led me to being one of the first, one of the founding demo monkeys for cheap-ass games. So I was right there at the beginning of that process,

as far as, you know, for those folks that weren't in the Seattle area, it was on the front edge of that. And then beyond that, you know, started to work with more and more companies. The CEO of Mayfair at the time, Will Nebeling, started attending our gaming groups in Ann Arbor in the early 2000s, started working with Mayfair a little bit,

got hired by Mayfair full-time in 2005, was with them, you know, basically got hired on as personal assistant slash general help and left there as a shareholder and, you know, vice president of acquisition development. Once the company was sold, I've spent a couple of years at Steve Jackson Games as an actual employee. And then eventually ended up with Amigo, where I am now, where I'm C-O of the, basically the North American operation. So C-O is kind of a broad term for people? Like, what is it that you'd say like your kind of core functions are as a C-O?

Because I think my experience is pretty different from company to company. It is very different in the sense that there are two people who work on the North American operation. So when you say it's a broad kind of category, it's a broad category. It's pretty much anything we need done. It's myself or my cohort, Corey, who has the title sales director. So he does a lot of kind of day-to-day sales stuff. He works with our Amazon working on our website currently, getting that revised. But a lot of like event planning is still me.

A lot of the, you know, when we do presentations, we go to shows, that's still me. a certain amount of the marketing planning as we're ramping those activities up, social media, a lot of sustaining things in there. And a little bit of product pitching, not so much development anymore, but still can, you know, I still will take pitches at shows and forward those on to our folks in Germany as needed. So, yeah, a little bit of everything. Yeah, so I love that. I mean, and you've had, the fact that you've had so much experience

in such a wide breadth of the industry is one of the reasons why I was excited to have you on the podcast. And I think in particular, there's this challenge that exists now of game discovery, right? That it's easier than ever to make games. The tools are available. The information is available. All the kinds of things that I know I would have killed for when I was coming

up and I'm sure you know, you as well. It's so now, but the problem is that there's so much and the bar has been raised so much that it's very hard to kind of break through. And so I'd love to hear and you can kind of tackle this from any of your roles or ideally we'll hit all of them, you know, as someone who is in charge of as a, you know, for a major company acquiring games, you know, what are the things that separate people in the pack? Or in terms of a company that's trying to launch games, what are the tools that you use to kind of, you know, make, optimize your chances of kind of success

and reaching the audience as you want to reach? Sure. I think one of the things that, that I, that I tell game designers a lot is that, you know, 15 years ago, if I was taking a pitch, there would be those times when I could literally the presentation will be over I would say I thank you so much it was a pleasure meeting you on the way out the door there's a trash can you may put your prototype into it we'll get some sunlight never give this thing

another thought again just you know it is behind the barn to shoot it but as you say there are so many tools for game designers nowadays you know between you know things like the unpubs proto spills online forums, tools, all of the things that are there. Nowadays, when an acquisition person at a company is looking at a game, is the game good is just a checkmark?

I mean, if a game is not good, that means you literally haven't used any of the tools available to you, and it's probably not going to be worth our while to take a meeting with you again. We assume, and by extension, we see that most games that are out, out there right now are very, are perfectly adequate expressions of the game concepts the player, you know, the designer has wanted to put in front of us. So it goes, it immediately then goes past, is it good, is it very good, and goes into what are the specific things that we as a company are looking for to put on our schedule in order to, in order to, for us to succeed. So now it's like,

are you at the right price point? You know, is the materials that you've presented? part of the toolkit of the factories that we typically work with, or are we going to have to go find a new manufacturer, a new manufacturer for a particular component or to assemble something differently? Is the kind of game or the theme of the game as we see it appropriate for the release windows that we want for the products that we've got? If you've got a game about flowers, that's typically going to be a spring release.

And maybe our spring releases are full this time. Are we going to look at it? Are we going to delay it a year? in order to get the best chance for us to launch it within a window that it's going to be appropriate for. So, you know, the good news for designers is when you hear a no from a company, that is increasingly over the years meant less and less that your game is not publishable. It literally means this company is at this time is not ready for this design in their schedule. And I think, you know, I think that repeating that message over and over again,

a lot of the designers who I've had contact with that we've done this with, I've had at least, you know, you get the confidence that you know you can take it to multiple companies and know that even if you're hearing no again and again and again, that may not be and shouldn't be considered a reflection of your design unless you're being told that. It really is at this point what company is going to be the best fit for your design, to give it the best chance for success. Yeah, that's great insight. This is where I kind of advise a lot of the people that I work with and new designers that,

you know, success in a pitch is not your pitch, your game gets accepted. Obviously, it's great if that's true. But success in a pitch is the door is open for you to come back in the future, right? You are somebody who has good enough designs and they seems like a good enough person to work with that people will take more pitches from you in the future. That's a big win in your early stages. And so having, making sure that you have a certain bar of quality before you go and pitch. and then related to what you talked about,

making sure that you did your research, right, that you know that the person you're pitching to, what kinds of games do they make? How does your game fit into their portfolio? If it's not, if it's a complete miss or you can't speak to it at all, then it shows, I think, a lack of preparation and waste the time of the publisher,

which means, again, you're less likely to be able to come in and pitch. Are there other ways? I mean, you know, so for me, I would recommend people go to the websites for the publishers they want to publish, find games that are, you know, in the category of the game you're trying to make and ideally be targeting those people.

Are there other tools that you would recommend for people to make sure that they optimize the chance that their pitches are to the right people or that they can help find the right audience for their particular genre of game? Sure. Something like board game geek is a tremendous tool that's available. And you can do things like search on age levels, search on mechanisms, you know, be able to kind of search on game weight and look at, you know, if you do that filter within a specific time frame, you can find those full. who are today or within the last 12 or 12 or 24 months that perhaps are producing games that look like the kind of game that you created. And so that's a great starting way to kind of filter through and find a lot of the different companies that are out there that you may not have heard of that you may not have contact

with, but that you would have that capability to take a look at your stuff. You know, when we go, for example, to UK Games Expo, the number of companies that kind of flip the script where you know you see them they know companies have big big booms or big big presences at a U.S. show and suddenly they're the ones that are in the 10 by 10 and these other companies are over there with the 10 by 20s and the 20 by 20s and you know representing that they have a much larger presence in Europe also means that if you have the opportunity to go an SIN or to a UK Games Expo or look at the manufacturing list for the dealers room at a UK Games Expo, which is much cheaper, to be able to look at and say, hey, here's a bunch of companies

I've maybe never heard of or that have a much larger presence there than I would have expected. Why is that? Look at their product line and discover that, yeah, they have a much broader, you know, perhaps representation of products than you'd see in the U.S. So it's so much of it is information gathering and looking for tools like board game lists, like dealer room lists, be able to be able to find, find, find, those games that look like yours that potentially would give you possible targets for pitching your game. And the other thing to remember is that you've got, you know, you look at a list

of, you know, it was interesting. I was talking with one of the folks from AEG this week, and Johnsons used to have a blog post which have been taken down since. I would love to see them come back up. But one of them was discussing the AEG process, and this was from 2019, but how they go. from the 1,250 or so pitches they receive a year down to two products. And it walks through it at each step, you know, 50% of those products are rejected off the sell sheet. And so that means your sell sheet's fairly important. You know, they'll take another 40% off the top based on video presentation. So perhaps you need to work on your video stuff to be able to do that. So it's, you know, finding the different possibilities you have to pitch,

But then doing the due diligence to make your presentation of your materials the best you can without spending a tremendous amount of money or thousands of dollars on a video, you know, just well light your kitchen table, put your iPhone, your iPhone on there and set it up on a tripod so it's not wobbling all over the place and do it. And that's, that's usually good enough to at least express your concepts, even if those concepts are later just not accepted by the company. Yeah, yeah. The way I think about it is, look, when you're trying to get a game ready to pitch, right, you're spending, you know, at months and months and months, maybe years, iterating and, you know, looping and getting yourself to a place where the game is good enough. You should spend, you know, at least 10% of that time trying to get your pitch in a good place, right? You want to make sure that you're in a place where you're representing it well. And again, that comes with practice, right? So for those people out there, they're not necessarily feeling comfortable with it. You know, there's, you know, the more you pitch, the better you get at it. The more you're able to model, I think we have a sell sheet guide, I think like a game designer.com that people can download too that

will help give some tips on it. But basically, it's just a matter of giving information in a clear way and starting to present it. And ideally, if you're with, you're pitching the right publishers and you're building relationships, they'll be giving you feedback on stuff that, you know, how you can improve and how you can get better. So that all makes sense. There's another, another, you know, one of the things I'm looking, I'm actually prepping my, my seminar schedule for Gamma Expo right now. And one of the things we're going to be doing is going to be a seminar on demos and talking about the variety of demos that exist. And one of the, probably, you know, 12 or 13 years ago, I was at Gamma talking about a thing

called the 2-2-2 demo, which was, you know, so often you would have a demo person from a company that would come into a store and be super excited about their game and the retailer is there, like, well, it's nice to have somebody who can show the game to the public and all that. But the person, that demo person is prepared to teach the game, to play the game. And unfortunately, it's a grandmother that's just walked up and said, what is this? And you're going to start launching into the overview and the way a turn works. And it doesn't work. So the 2-2-2 demo is basically, you need to have three demos for your game at all times. You need to have the two-sentence demo. Are you going to describe your game in two sentences

and then gauge interest? If they're still interested, go to the two-minute demo. This is the overview, how it works, maybe mechanisms, how you win, assess the audience, make sure they're still interested, and then if you've got the time and the interest, you can move on to the two play demo. So, you know, as a game, if you're pitching your games, that two sentence demo is literally the time it takes for lots of, you know, for lots of folks in the evaluation part of the industry to know whether or not your game is, is interesting. You literally have 60 to 90 seconds to get the attention of somebody who you are pitching to. And what you say in that first 60 seconds is absolutely critical to whether or not they are going to maintain.

And of course, someone like I've always said, I always want to do the Iron Man pitch. I'd be in a show. We'd have a table. They'd be sitting over here. I'd be over here. And my arm would be down over here out of sight. And the moment, you know, I would basically have it open. And the moment I've rejected this pitch, I would make the fist.

And the audience would see it, but they wouldn't. And then it's all about, can I maintain interest? Can I, you know, can I, you know, give you a legitimate interest in the product that you're presenting, even though I know right now the rest of this presentation about this game is not relevant to my company and the things that we're going to publish. But again, you're right. After that, this is just the conversation that opens up the relationship that eventually, that eventually may lead to a game that we are going to do together.

Yeah, yeah, and I love this sort of multi-demo process. The 2-22 is a great frame. For me, that two-sentence thing is the, I refer to as the elevator pitch, and I think there's nothing more important for your game. And I believe this is not just the case for trying to sell your game, by the way. Like, I think as you are early in design, you should be crafting your elevator pitch

so you know what your game is supposed to deliver on, right? Like, what is it that's exciting? If you can't say something that's exciting about your game, even in the early stages, then it's not a game. It's not something you're going to. So you want to be able to say, okay,

this is what it's going to be about. It's going to be about this quick, fast, you know, secretive turn play and stabbing your friend in the back. And it's like, okay, cool. So that's the emotion I'm looking for now,

does this thing deliver? And either the game has to evolve to match the pitch or vice versa. It's like, actually, you know, what the fun really is this sort of more strategic kind of, you know, cooperative thing.

Okay, cool. We'll shift it over that way. And so I think people should be working on their elevator pitch from the very, very beginning of the process. And then obviously, evolve as it goes. I think it's nothing more important.

I want to shift the perspective now, because again, you've taken this from both sides. As a publisher, here I am. I know what I'm looking for. Generally, the categories I'm looking for and I'm going to take in pitches, and we're going to filter through those pitches and go through this process of getting it down

to something that we're going to select. But I want to dig into what, how do you, as a publisher, decide what things you're looking for? How do you see what trends are happening in the game industry, or do you care about what trends are happening in the chemistry? Like you've already mentioned some things like we have, you know,

what can our factories do? What do we have experience with? What other factors come into play in terms of when you're trying to decide what projects are worth doing? What projects do you want to grow into as a company or, you know, et cetera? So it's, you know, I think there is a certain amount of danger in focusing on what's hot thematically. You know, it's hard to say,

hey, anytime you say, hey, you know, people really like llamas right now. Let's do the llama game or let's re-skin as llamas. And whether or not that's going to be relevant in six months, 12 months, two years, you know, no one knows, but it's probably not. It's always more interesting to take the game and look at it from a mechanism standpoint to say, is this a mechanism that feels fresh, that feels new? In the case of Amigo, when we talk about, you know,

we have these four logos we put on the back of all our affairs, family games. And the first one is five rules or less. And if you fit, if you can do your game with five rules or less, what you're going to find is that becomes a much more universally interesting or acceptable set of rules than something that takes four pages or eight pages or 20 pages. You're going to have more sustainability because you're going to have those people that can play the game, can understand the game, can teach that game to the next group of people down the line without a lot of stress or without delaying, you know, having to read a rulebook verbatim, you know, that idea of transferring that information becomes much simpler if all you've got

are three or four rules to communicate than an entire rulebook that you as a consumer may not be the best person to present those rules to the next group that comes along. So anything, you know, so when we're looking at those games, we're looking at those games that feel sort of have that iconic vibe of simple to play, the complex, is in the interaction and the emotions that are created and not so much in defining the experience through the use of a rule. So, you know, a lot of what we do is try to make things feel relatively timeless as it may be the right word because we're always looking to, you know, you'll still have to refresh your covers and make it look relevant to a current time.

But on the other hand, you look at, you know, we also, as, you know, Amigo is a great example of a company that has really, I think, captured a formula, captured an awareness of what they do well and have produced, you know, any company would be happy to have an evergreen in Take Five or No Thanks, or Saboteur, or Bonanza, or Lama. And all three of those, all five of those, rather, are games we have, and have been selling the case of, like, Take Five for 30 years. You know, that's a generational evergreen. That's when you've got people teaching their kids or teaching their, you know, their grand, you know, all of those, all of that's in play. And again, the simpler the game is, the easier it is to have that teaching experience and be a, be a positive.

Yeah. We don't focus on, you know, so we don't have to focus on theme. We just happen to focus on the playability and the transferability of that in front of the game to other, other players. Again, I had this conversation with a designer a while back is that we're not, sometimes, you have to step back and realize that you're not trying to sell a game to somebody, you're trying to sell them a social experience. This game that you were presenting is going to create a framework that will allow them to have a social experience with a group of their choice, and ideally that should be positive. And so when you're thinking about it in those terms, it's less about does the game work,

but it becomes, will they have fun? How easy is it for them to have fun? And how easy is it for them to transfer that fun to another group or to other people? people that are playing those games. So, you know, thinking about it in terms of what social experience are you providing. And again, for us at Amigo, you know, we have found over the years that simplification of the process of the of the rule set, you know, making it a smaller, more compact, more directed game allows us to be able to have that transfer of social, uh, social fund much quicker than perhaps other games. Right. Yeah. Well, so this, this idea of creating

the Evergreen game is, you know, it's kind of the gold standard for everybody here, right? Everybody, that's the, you want that game. It's going to be played for decades, right? I mean, essentially is going to be celebrating. It's 15-year anniversary next year, which is pretty exciting, but it's not 30 years. And, you know, the question is, what is it?

And, you know, it's like one of those things where, to some extent, it feels a little bit like lightning in a bottle when you catch these things and get it to be that kind of catch-on thing. So, you know, making it simple with, you know, making it easy for people to teach others, being focused on the core. social experience. It sounds like in essence, you know, by less components, less price point, helps a decent amount within a range. Are there other things that you would say contribute to or

increase the likelihood of success of something coming into a evergreen status? So, so, you know, going back a couple of steps to something, you know, to the games that I, you know, when I was with Mayfair and by extension got to, you know, work with a lot of, you know, the lookout folks. And so now we have something like a curricula, which is definitely not a five rules or less game, but absolutely has had sustained evergreen success over time. Then a lot of that becomes, what are you doing? What energy are you bringing to it to give it a reason to still be relevant five years, seven years, ten years down the line? That can be as simple as expansions.

But as well, I think there's a certain. amount of understanding when you have something that's at that level and understanding that there is a certain amount of marketing that is still required to maintain that relevancy, to maintain that awareness in the industry. You know, look out every year at Essen would produce this deck of cards for Agricola that were always pictures of the staff or people they wanted liked. And it was just this fun little weird deck that would, that they built on every year. So I've got an agricula card with my face on it that's an actual playable agriacola card you can put in there.

But again, it was a case where people would get so excited and would find that lookout booth and, you know, they wanted to be part of the tribe. They wanted to have those cards, the special cards. They wanted to go get, you know, even back when I was, when lookout was just a thing that I was interested in, you know, I would always beeline to the Essen booth because they'd have the little 1500 piece bonanza expansion that they did. And that was, you know, once a year they would have this weird little deck. They would sell off. And because, you know, and so through those little things, even if they weren't court of the game, even if they weren't even necessary for the game, there was still that drumbeat of, hey, this is really cool.

Here's this little thing we're doing. You should come check us out. You should come play it again. And maybe if you buy the deck, you know, take it home, slip the deck in, you'll play it again for maybe it's the first time in a while. You know, I mean, you say, ascension's going on 15 years. and, you know, I'm sitting there at that booth, every Gen Con, you know, at Gen Con, and it's like, okay, what's the new promo card since the last time, you know, since last Gen Con,

and, you know, here's your 15, 20 bucks, whatever it is. And I have to go home and I have to open up all the boxes to put the front. So I've touched your game again. I've got it out. I go, oh, I remember. I should play this, you know. And that's sustaining the game. That's what it takes to kind of keep that excitement and, and keep that environment around your game

where people kind of go, yeah, I'm part of the tribe. I'm this is cool. This is what I want. Yeah, yeah, this is great. And so I want to dig deeper into the broader concept of how, you know, we market to maintain relevancy. And so there's, you know, we've mentioned, you mentioned a couple things that definitely makes sense here, right? Obviously, full scale expansions for a game, smaller scale promo cards and new content, new ways to play. You've also mentioned having a presence that shows. And I, and which is, you know, I have

mixed feelings on, you know, we was, it was my no-brainer. This is how I market. This is how I reach people before COVID. COVID changed that equation quite a bit in a lot of ways. The way that you reach people and the way that people expect to discover and purchase now is a lot more online. The trend's not as strong as it was then, but it's still shifted. I don't think.

And then, you know, there's other variations of like how much you should be marketing to stores. And, you know, we used to send a session promo cards to stores through distribution every time we did a new release. And that stopped being as effective as it used to be. And so we now more distributed direct to consumer. And so I'm curious what other things you see as critical to marketing, either for the launch of a new game or for the kind of extension of a new game

and how you think about that resource expenditure because it's a lot, right? Making new content constantly and keeping relevant is a lot of work, right? So how do you decide where to apportion that? So a lot of questions there, you can take a bite at whichever one you like. Sure. So Amigo actually, in a sense, has kind of a thrifted. three-prong strategy with their games. And one being hobby market and kind of maintaining,

and just the folks who play games and are interested in the games we have. And we publish a lot of games that are very much relevant to that audience and very much kind of up their alley. Then we also have specialty toys. We have buyer groups that we work with that take our stuff and directly market into specialty toys. And that's a very different market. It's a very different mix of products.

So, I know, our number one seller into that market is a game called Clack. And that's a game that probably 99% of the hobby market will have never heard of. And the reason for that, it's just a simple magnetic matching game for kids five and up. And it works really well, and it's a lot of fun. And families and kids love the game and love the little, you know, the pieces and the magnets and all that sort of thing. But it's just, it's not even on the radar of hobby. market at all. So now I have, you know, so over here, there's this evergreen game that we've got that

requires its own kind of marketing and its own attention that does not transfer over to the hobby market as it's not a game that's really relevant to that audience. And then, of course, you have, you know, your broad market, mass market, big box sort of stuff, which is literally about, you know, basically getting it placed, showing enough success with a product that they're interested in it, and then at the time of release, to be able to have enough kind of low-key marketing out there to kind of make there be an awareness. It was one of those things we really found with Catan is that, you know, when we're selling that with Mayfair, is that we didn't have to go out and do a whole bunch of marketing,

you know, when you say, hey, we're going to put Caton into Target. There was this drumbeat already. So Catan, little articles would pop up. We'd always make sure every time we did like the World Championships, you know, we would be out there promoting the national championship, doing a news story with whatever the, you know, the newspaper was in that area. You'd see it pop up on, you know, Big Bang Theory or something like that. And you just, you have this little drumbeat of Catan, Catan, Catan, Catan, Catan, Catan, and then you see it on a target shelf, and it's like, oh, hey, I've heard some stuff about that game.

Let's find out what it's about. that's really expensive to do all of that all the time and do it well. You know, we, one of the things with Amigo is we've had, we've had some challenges. This year has been really focused on us, getting our Amazon presence kind of back up the snuff, and redoing our website.

So it's, it's a relevant and usable. That's pretty blunt to say, but really that's kind of where we were at with the win. And we're still working on getting that done. because with all this marketing, you have to have a call to action. You have to have, you know, hey, this is this great game and you get it. And where you get it is, you know, it's great.

You can send them to Amazon, you send them to your local retailer. You send them to Target, whatever it might be. There's got to be that place for it to, for them to go find that game. And that is really, you know, one of the things, especially with Evergreens, it's something that was really driven home to us with Bonanza, which really fell off the market for about four years where literally we went from you know tens of thousands of copies of that base game to zero and bringing that back you literally had a four or five year gap of store owners that had never sold it had no emotional attachment to it players who had never

found it and so bringing that back of kind of doing that drumbeat of bonanza you know trying to get bonanza back to awareness back to front of mind you know we've recovered that that business for the most part. But it is a matter. It's much easier for us to maintain a low drumbeat than it is for that to drop off and then try to recover it, you know, through through a lot more marketing, a lot more time and a lot more money. Can we get granular? Can we get granular on that one? Because I think that's like a really interesting story. Like this is a popular game that, you know, did well. It suddenly fell off. And I'm curious if you have any theories as to why. And then what specifically to create that drumbeat and ideally ranges of understanding like budgeting and everything

because like this is the stuff that I think I really want to demystify as part of this podcast like okay create a study of drumbeat it's kind of expensive it's something you kind of have to outreach like let's yeah how can we can we just like parse this out a little bit because I think it's a great case study sure so so bonanza I think really kind of started to drop off on sales and let's let's let's give a quick quick bonanza give me your two sentence version of bonanza just for people that don't know it. So the game is 27 years old. It's an Uve-Rosenberg design. It's not his first, but it's one of his earlier designs. And it is, it is to this day. And again, I sold Catan for a very long time. Bonanza is still the best trading and negotiation game on the market today. Effectively,

you are bean farmers, you are growing beans, you are harvesting beans for money, and whoever has the most money at the end of the game wins. Simple concept. Yeah, I love this game, by the Yeah, I'm going to put my, I'll be part of your drumbeat because I think it's really fun and really fascinating. And one of the reasons I say it's one of the best trading games is because there are multiple metrics by which you would trade. It can be, I am getting something of value that I will put in my hand. I can be getting rid of something out of my hand because of the fixed hand thing for those that don't know. In that game, you do not change the order of cards in your hand. Cards come in the back.

They play out of the front. You can't change that order unless you trade with other players. I will tell you the one downside of this game is if you were a magic pro-magic player, it is the hardest thing in the world to not shuffle your hands. This was a thing that we learned as pro-magic players, you intentionally would shuffle your hands so that your opponent couldn't track which cards you'd drawn when and sort of deduce what was going on. And so we just all have this habitual shuffling thing,

which annoys the hell of people. And I had to like train myself to stop for Bonanza. But other than that, perfectly. And very much, it's a game that even when we talk about, you know, concealing information, it's not a game where you really have to do that. I'll be super public and say, I've got this. Did anybody want it? Anybody got this?

Or I'm looking for this because I need this, this, or these other two things that are in my hand and I'll trade. So the point being is that there's a lot of opportunities for win-win trading in the game. It is very much a game where the person who trades the most is likely going to be the winner of the game. game. And so ultimately, you have, you have an incentive to do these active friendly trading as part of the game in order to succeed. But it also means that everyone's kind of engaged with the game and everyone is feeling, you know, you feel good about a trade, you know, because you're getting something. And even though they're getting something out of it, there's not that evaluation of saying, well, I got 60% of the value of the trade and they got 40% of the

value of trade. So I won or I lost. You know, really when you're talking about all those metrics, really does, it really provides the opportunity for win-win trading, unlike most other games on the market. All right. So we know, we know why Bannanza's cool. So at some point,

it takes off, it's doing tens of thousands of units a year. And then at some point, that stops. Do we know why? Do we know what happened there? What was your theory? Um,

it was pretty much the, the previous, uh, the previous licensee. It just was no longer irrelevant. It was no longer relevant in their catalog. Mm. So,

so ultimately we took the license back. Um, you know, 2018 was when Amigo games, the U.S. operation restart, you know, kind of started up. And the first thing they tried to do is pull back as many of these licenses as they could because ultimately Amiga is going to tell the story of their own games better than a licensee. Licensies can be excited about them and all that, but there are other business reasons and relevancies that may come up. And in this case, this was just a game that kind of went fallow.

And we brought it back in. We pre-published it. We put it out there. and suddenly discovered that it wasn't moving the way we thought it would be moving. And in investigation, this was the story we were being told by retailers, or just the story being that they didn't know what the game was, that this was a game that needed to be, you know, the story needed to be told a little more actively than just it exists,

you know, buy your three or four copies every, how do you go about telling that story? Sure. So a couple of ways we did it. Number one, you know, we were very active in making sure that we were out, you know, at shows that Bonanza was front and forward in our booth, in our booth information, in the demos that we did in making sure that if we were doing Play to Wins, that Bonanza was always part of that mix, getting that out in people's hands for shows. So suddenly it would be a, it would be there again, invisible and playing it. a certain amount of, you know, doing some of our banner ads and some things like that. And then we also made an interesting choice

about a year and a half ago to start going down the road of a new edition of the base game called Donza Dahlia, Bonanza Dalia, which was exactly the regular game of Bonanza, except that we've re-skinned it with Dahlia's with art from Beth Sobel. And it looks really pretty.

It's beautiful pictures of, of Dahlia flowers. And, you know, even, even with Inamigo, there was a little drumbeat of, you know, why do we do this is our number one seller? Why would we need a new base game? And the reality is, it's within the hobby market, it's a great game and everybody plays it because it's a great game. And the art is kind of cute and humors.

In the rest of the world, what we're trying to do is pitch a game that is based on German puns with a German pun in the title. with this cartoon art and no real reference to what it is or how it works. There's a particular illustration that they're called the blue bean, the Blauobona. And, you know, as a U.S. person, you look at it and you go, okay, it's a blue bean with a cowboy hat and six shooters. Okay, you know, whatever. In Germany, Blauwbona is a colloquial term for a gun cartridge. And there was a whole set of westerns in like the 70s, you know, Blaubleona.

for Haleigh for Blahubona. And so, you know, Germans look at that and go, oh, that's clever. That's the gun, the movies and all the things like that, none of which, zero of which, you know, makes any translation to the U.S. And so Dahlia's was our opportunity to bring awareness to the game into things like the specialty market that we're literally rejecting the game based on the way it looks from the cover, but suddenly now had a version of it that had all the great game inside, but looked appropriate,

looked like it was something that belonged on their shelf. And so finding ways to take, you know, what is effectively a very good game, but making it, you know, both aware,

you know, making sure that that presence is there every time you put out, every time you go to a show, every time you go to a distributor show, you know, every, every opportunity to have that game there,

but then also finding ways to extend those, extend markets as that success is happening, as you're seeing those games, ramp up in numbers to be able to say it. And here's this new thing that will service your market in particular to make that work. And so Bonanza was out. So this is great. So a lot of time with shows and demos and putting it out there,

new release that would, with a potentially new twist that could help it reach new audiences. You said that it was kind of out of sales for like four to five years. And you took the license back in 2018. So it was how long did it take you? and ballpark, I guess, of how much of this is, because like having shows and presence of booths and technically in that space, like it's not, it's not cheap.

Like, what was the time to get that, you know, up and running again? And what was the kind of investment that it felt like it took before you could kind of, you know, start to see a return? So the timeline, the timeline was really, you know, we saw the, you know, we, company started in 2018 and that's when the, the beginning of the process of trying to get this stuff back happened.

We did not get it back until 2020, and the first new edition of Bonanza that had the Amigo logo exclusively on it was 21. So that group that, you know, from 2017-ish to 2021-ish, it represents the time at which that license really was fallow. And so, you know, so really in 21, that's when we had to start doing this. And we knew, we knew in a sense, especially coming out of the pandemic, we had this opportunity. A lot of people were looking at games. A lot of people were, you know, there's just, you know, people are online and they're looking at stuff. Yeah, those people are just the front edge of shows starting to come back, come back around again. And so all of that stuff, we just wanted to make sure we were in the mix for any time, you know,

Amigo at least has that comfort of it as a brand is something people pay. attention to and it was just a matter of us being able to say hey if you're paying attention to us or if you run into us bananza is something that you need to remember and and redefine it as it's ours now you know but be able to say hey here's this game again time to pay attention to it again yeah well i mean obviously i'm i'm i'm particularly interested in the subject because you know i think we've talked about this before but i've you know i've gone through the exact same process with ascension right we had our whole all of our brands were licensed to ultra pro for five or six years and you know not that they not to say anything disparaging with them but they have their own you know business line it wasn't as

much of a priority for them as it's going to be for me obviously it's my baby and we only just got those licenses back a little over a year ago and so we've been in that exact process of like okay how do we reintroduce this game wasn't sales weren't you know zero but they weren't where they were before I handed that license off and so it's been a process of trying to reintroduce it to the world we have over 16 different expansions. So trying to bring all of those back into print and which ones and how do we do that has been an interesting journey as well. And it's been rewarding in a lot of ways because there's a lot of people who love the game

and who've been waiting for exactly this. But in other ways, we're trying to reestablish and kind of grow into new audiences. And so this is something that's very close to my heart. I'm very focused on right now. Sure. And I think, I think, Ascension, and here I am going to talk about your game as if I'm teaching you something. But like with Catan, we always put a Catan family tree in the game, which was basically, hey, start here. Now you have this, now you have that. You know, something like,

you know, what's the difference between seafarers and cities and nights? Cities, you know, seafarers is not going to add a lot more rules, going to give you boats, which are like roads, but it's going to give you a lot of different scenarios to play. Cities and nights, we're going to add an hour and a half and a whole other layer of resources and we're going to make it more grunchy. And if that's what sounds interesting, go this way, otherwise go that way. And with something like Ascension, you know, in my head, you know, so for when I fire up the app, it's like, bang, it's the first two sets, it's the dreamborn sets. You know, those are the ones that I immediately want to start playing because those are the, I don't have necessarily the dye isn't, it's something I'll play, not right away, though. It's like, I'm certainly not going to play that with somebody new.

You know, I have the big monster sets with all the promos and everything in it. And then when I'm carrying around is the 10th anniversary edition, because it's, it's, again, it's the way that I learned about the game and the game is great. But it also is the best expression of that first set that's out there. You know, you've got Runeik-Lyckman-throkesman, you know, magically, oh, it's unite now. It's not this, you know, I played before or after, you know, all of that stuff, I think, you know, you've got 10 years of experience that suddenly is available and is in this beautifully accessible package. and that's what I want people. If I'm teaching the game, that's what I'm showing them right off the bat.

So, you know, it's thinking about your game, thinking about your line in the sense of, you know, how do I want people to see this thing? You know, in Carcassone, you probably don't want people to see Princess and the Dragon until they have a whole lot of experience under their belt before they have something that's running around and kicking people out and doing things like that.

You know, what is, you know, what benefits are being brought to the game with an expansion or with a standalone set, what complexities are being included, and being able to talk about that, define that for an audience is critical, I think. And that's the process, again, you're on the front edge of, and I'm looking forward to see what you do with.

Yeah, so you literally, just to be clear, you literally would have a kind of Catan family tree like insert in the box to let people know, hey, here's the things you could go. Here's where we recommend you go next. If you're into this kind of thing, go here. If you're into this kind of thing, go here.

And that would just be an insert that they would have in the box. Every set of Catan that was sold. Okay, I'm just taking that and using that right away. So thank you. We just finished a crowd fund for, which for those listening, late pledges are available on a game found. But we did where we did bring our entire back catalog into, we're bringing it back into print for the first time.

So that was the first time anybody's ever had access to it in over a decade that we've had everything in print. And so it won't be available at retail until next year. But that's the perfect time for us to be introducing this exact kind of thing, which I hadn't thought of before. So thank you. I'm getting direct immediate useful benefit out of this. So let's shift gears then.

And then I'm curious about, you know, you've already talked about your demo 222 principle, but you have an enormous amount of experience running demos, teaching people how to demo, demoing, you know, what makes things, what makes a great demo.

So I understand the two, you know, what makes a great elevator pitch, two-sentence demo. I understand, well, we could talk a little bit about the two-minute demo, but I really want to, because this is something I focus a lot of energy on, is training new staff, training people,

and I also love to bring my design team. I make sure everybody does a rotation at demoing at events because there's nothing better to help you realize how much every single rule and complexity has to justify itself that have you a demo game. There's so many things that when you're playing the game, you're designing the game, you're like, I know,

this is obvious. Of course everybody's going to know this. It is so far from obvious. So how would you recommend? How do you think about demoing, training demowers, making games optimize for demoing? What insights can you bring to the bear here? Sure. So one of the things I am, so again, I am not a designer. You know, for the most part, the couple of designs I have under my belt are things that got stuck in my head and just frustrated me.

And I got them done on a piece of paper so that I didn't have to think about them anymore, I can get back to my job. but because of that, I have those, you know, I sort of, you know, you get the reason that those games existed in the first place, because there was some part of it that I thought was just too cool or too interesting as a mechanism. And that's the thing that if it were to become a game, it would be the thing I would want to share with the world. And so finding that in your game, and the game that I am going to present to the public is always first and foremost. What is the fun of the game. I use that question when I'm getting pitched a game. I use that question during

development, and I use that as part of a demo. So obviously, what is, you know, how do I win, which is fun, and what fun am I going to have on my way to the win itself? From there, you are rehearsed. You are rehearsed. You are rehearsed again. You go through the process where you take the little random bits out and you make it a positive presentation, and then you go past that to the point where it doesn't sound like you are reading off a script that you have done and make it feel natural and inviting to people. So you know, just, you know, so you get into the game, you talk about how you're going to how to win, you're going to talk about those elements that, you know, how the process, you know, how it turns going to work. If at all possible,

break things down to sets of three. So I'm going to teach you it's this or this, this, this, more than that, you have a play aid. And the play aid goes, there and then you reference the play aid because i don't want to teach five you're not going to remember five different things two is two is good three you can get away with after that play aid sits down the table next to the next to the player so a little reminder cards are just things that people can look can reference basically there's a new thing that i you know it's it's always good to be to be kind of reminded that are there are always things for you to learn in this industry um eric lang recently released a couple of games um with uh like

and Rittera with Hasbro and I Love Manatees. And one of the interesting things that he brought up and I really kind of have taken to heart in the last few months is that when you look at his rulebooks, he has deliberately and successfully pulled out all jargon, pulled out all the things that you require you to have previous knowledge of games, game industry, mechanisms, all those sorts of things, especially because in something in the case of life and Ratera, if it's a high, if it's a Hasbro game, it's going to probably find itself into a house that is maybe buying a Hasbro game because they have monopoly. And they don't have, they don't know what a trick is. They don't know what, you know, there are lots of those terms that he has deliberately taken out of his rulebooks to write in plain English in order to be able to quickly communicate a concept that doesn't require you have previous information. And so when I'm, you know, so now I'm thinking about my demo is a little differently to say, you know, am I using jargon? am I using something that requires the person across the table for me to know what a deck builder is,

to know what a meeple is, to know what, you know, a trick or whatever that might be, you know, structuring the demo so that you're using plain language that is understandable to anyone, regardless of your level of, yeah. Now, if you're demoing as a big game, yes, you can, you know, someone comes to a curricula. One's going to assume they have some experience in gaming in general, And maybe there's some shorthand you can use there. But as you're practicing your demo, it's important to realize that you're going to have a wide audience in front of you.

And the wider it is, the more you need to make your language plain to present it to somebody. Yeah, yeah. This is a big thing for me. So when I have demos and now I've got, God knows how many demos under my belt, especially of the core games I work on, I have like this sort of demo tree that I'm planning, right? Like if I know, like, oh, hey, have you played any deck building games before? If yes, go down this path.

If no, go down this path. Have you done these? And so you can kind of like, you know, some judgment of just like when you see somebody, you can kind of know, get a sense of their experience level and then just ask a couple key questions. And then it's like, okay, you, I can use jargon and jump to here. And you're going to get interested in some of the uniquenesses. And you, I'm going to have to do this in very plain language, just kind of get you going.

And then, you know, we'll get it from there. And I found there's like, in different games, there's the, how quickly can you get them to the, to the aha moment, right? the thing where they're like, oh, cool, I get it. Like, how, what's the gap between your teaching ability and that? How many things can you? And then as I'll referencing how much of those things can I defer teaching until later? Because once I've got you past that, like, ooh, moment, then you'll be with me a lot longer

and I can explain more and I can do more. But if I, every single thing I have to like teach you or walk you through or you have to kind of every barrier that's between you and the like, oh, wow, this is kind of cool, is you're going to lose like huge segments of your audience. So it's a very, very conscious of that. There's, you know, and you have, there's a bigger point I'll make here in a second. But, you know, and there's also being aware of the game itself and what you have on a table in front of somebody. I mean, again, if I'm doing a demo, my everything about that demo is stacked.

I know the card that's on top. I next to know the next four cards. I'm going to be able to fluidly go through that turn. And it's going to be the optimal way. for my cards to come out to present it. I'm going to make sure that no toys are within arm's reach. I remember for years I would teach cash and guns, which is a game another company that.

And the primary conceit there is you're in a Quentin Tarantino film, and the primary prop you have is a foam gun that you will point at somebody. And they're like, I'm going to try and teach this game. And if those guns are on the table, that's it. It's going to be five minutes before I have a chance to get anybody's attention. back enough. So like that stays under the table in the box and you say getting to an aha moment. It's like, okay, so we're going to put money on the table. We're going to talk about this. You're going to choose a card. And then you're going to take your phone gun and bam,

I've got everyone's intention immediately. That's great. But I think it comes to the larger point and the important point, which is, and this is challenging for some people in the game industry. I know, you know, games are one of the reasons I, is really the development of my social abilities, you know, going from someone who didn't, you know, didn't do a lot of friends and didn't do all that. And in high school, you know, really D&D and the friends that I made with games to a certain extent, you know, really help bring me some sense of how to act in social situations and how to become better at those interactions. You know, a good

demo person is going to be able to read the social cues that are at the table. people interested, are they not interested? If they're not interested, you know, are they, are they not interested because they're looking at components? Are they not interested because your presentation isn't good? You know, all of those things are the things where, you know, if you need to bail and get the game going just to get people occupied, even if they're going to play suboptimally, you know, sometimes that's what you have to do. But you have to be aware of the people who are in front of you and not just kind of, you know, I've got to get through my script and everyone's, I'm losing everybody, but I'm still got a whole page to, you know, you just have to read,

you have to read the room, you have to read people and be able to say, okay, so let's go ahead and get things going. And I've got some more things to talk about. We'll get to those when we get to them. Yeah, well, that skill of that kind of intuition of being able to read people and understand when they're engaged, when they're disconnected, what those checkout moments are, how you can bring them back, whether it be with a prop like a gun or, you know, the shiny beads in Ascension or just kind of, you know, showing something cool that's happening or just drawing them in,

helping them walk through some steps. That stuff is a skill that's really worth developing because it's not just about demoing. It's really about being able to evaluate your game at a deeper level. So what I encourage people to do that are out there, even if you don't have a game right now or something to demo, when you're playing games,

when you're playing other games, start paying attention to where those emotional moments are happening. Start paying attention to when other people are checking out how those things are happening. Or if you're teaching just somebody else's game, what are those moments, where are those things? And use that as a practice tool for that when you want to be, you know,

demoing or pitching your own game to really kind of hone in those instincts because I definitely have seen those experiences where I'm like, I know I'm losing you right now, so I got to kind of hail Mary and bring you back in and I've been able to save demos that I'm sure if I wasn't as paying attention, I would have lost if I was going off on a script.

And that's something that yes, it is, you know, some people have a, you know, can innately do that, you know, you have that, you know, pick up on those social cues quickly. But for those that, you know, it's a skill and it's a skill that you learn with practice and it's a skill you learn by putting yourself in situations where you have the opportunity to do that.

Yeah. Okay. I think I got time for maybe one more cool topic here. There's a million things. That's why I love having guests like you on the podcast. I love all of our conversations outside the podcast because you just have such a wide breath of experience. And I think it just people don't, people underestimate the value of that.

Like it's for me, there are many times where I lament my role as a CEO because it takes away from my time to design games. Right. I don't get to spend as much time on games. as I used to, but it gives me such a broader perspective to evaluate and make games with a bigger context. And you bring so much context into everything that you do. So the other piece that's been, I've put a lot of, you know, gets a lot of attention now is sort of content creation, right? Specifically, you know, now, you know, streaming and, you know, unboxing videos and working with

influencers and creating your own content and TikTok. And I mean, there's a million things that now all of a sudden could take all the hours in the day. And you know, you've created a lot of different types of content over the years. You've worked with a lot of content creators over the years. How do you think about how publishers and creators should be approaching content creation in terms of both, you know, their product discovery as well as, you know, teaching and kind of keeping their game relevant? So interestingly, this is something that I'm really kind of coming.

to with, coming to with fairly fresh eyes, you know, this year in particular, you know, we've been doing kind of sustaining work in the social media area until we had, again, a place for our calls of action to end up. So, you know, I'm spending a lot of time right now thinking about what those next step are. What do we want to do as a company to be able to really, you know, effectively market our stuff? And yeah, I mean, we've, we've done some, really weird stuff over the years. You know, I wrote a puppet show for sheep for four and a half years for Mayfair. And it's still, you know, it still warms my heart to think that, you know, there are those

people that know me either as the, as a disembodied voice over Glover, who was our white glove, you know, movies, our white glove demos thing at Mayfair, or, you know, was the, was the guy that brought sheep to life, you know, every week as part of, as part of that, that broadcast. You know, those were things that were a lot of fun to do. They had real value. They brought things in a different way. My degree is video radio broadcasting. So I have, for better or for worse, a certain level,

a certain standard of what I want to see in videos. I'm not super excited about the kitchen table stuff. I don't like an hour and a half of people saying, um, and ah, and kind of dithering around, you know, a topic. I prefer my scripted stuff. and I think it's more effective to have scripted stuff. I like the idea of those people that are excited about your games as influencers who want to do stuff with your games.

I also believe you as a company have to have a way of presenting your voice as part of those things as well. It can't always be Amigo games presented by this other person. It has to be Amigo games and here's our stuff. And people are looking for that stuff, even if you're not necessarily producing that content. So you are being defined by what's out there, whether you create it or not. So putting some time into creation is really important. I love the idea of TikTok. It's exactly the kind of thing that I would do if I had unlimited time and I had a person who was in charge of everything that I'm in charge of. You know, I would just sit and I would do that for a day that you need to be relevant

on TikTok and could do that humor stuff. You know, that stuff, you know, that stuff would be a lot of fun to do, but it's not just creating that content, but it's an interacting with your community that you build through that. And that's the thing that, you know, I learned probably the most at Mayfair with the stuff that we did was that it's not just a, I've produced a cool thing, and now it's out in the world. It's now people want to talk to you about that cool thing, and you've got to be available and approachable and pleasant about that, no matter what, you know, interaction they've got. So, you know, and you've got those people that are always going to hate your stuff. There's a guy, you know, there's a guy online for like 20 years has been abusing me for my voice.

It just says, I'm an awful voiceover person. I'm an awful. I don't want to hear your voice. When Mayfair closed down, his comment was, at least I don't have to listen to that guy on video again. And so here we are. So ha, ha, ha, ha. But, you know, it's, there's, there's, there's a level of kind of maintaining, hey, this is, this is our goal. And if we express it smartly, if we work with people that are going to be able to

produce quality content. And we understand that we're doing this, you know, in a broad way so that people have a chance to have fun with our stuff. We have a chance to talk about our stuff and be enthusiastic about it, to really enjoy what we're doing, not producing things out of just obligation, but finding something, you know, finding something in this process that makes you happy, that communicates the excitement of a new game and a new way of, you know, a new mechanism that you maybe haven't seen before or haven't seen in that way. You know, excitement is is so much of what makes that fun.

And yes, content creators bring that excitement, a manufacturer or otherwise, and you kind of can tell the ones that, you know, who are legitimately doing this because they love it. And it just happens to make some money as well. And those people that maybe are a little more, a little more pedestrian about it. But ultimately, at the end of the day, as a company, it's got to be kind of that broad mix, but it's got to be the broad mix of stuff that you are willing to sustain online over time. And as we ramp some of our efforts up, behind all of that is okay. I'm ready to start doing it. You know,

our YouTube videos again, and I'm ready to start interacting with folks on YouTube again. Here we got. Yeah. Well, so yeah, my takeaway is from that, right? One, you know, enthusiasm, genuine enthusiasm is a superpower. And that's something I've realized throughout my life. And, you know, frankly, I don't think any of us would be doing what we do in this space.

If we weren't genuinely enthusiastic and passionate about it, there's plenty of other ways to make a living. If you're going to be in tabletop games in particular, really got to have a passion for it and make sure to be honest and let that show. And then when it comes to content creation, I mean, like, again, we've been doing this podcast now for, what do we started in like 2018, 2017. So six, six, seven years now. And I, you know, we do it every month now more twice a month. And it's, I would never, ever have continued to do this work and continue it if I didn't love these kinds of conversations. Like, I just genuinely, you know, love talking to people like you. I love chatting about the industry and like thinking about design and the business of design.

So, you know, if it wasn't for me, doing this for me, I wouldn't be here. I mean, I want to serve the audience, obviously, but I would eventually burn out if it was just like a slog every time. So very important there. And then, and then I think the other thing I heard you say is that, you know, you've got to be prepared. if you're going to put yourself out there for the haters and for all the things that come with that because I don't know if gaming is particularly bad about this, it feels like it is,

there's some people who just really, like, they're just there, they get a joy out of hating on you. If you're going to put yourself out there or do anything of substance, you just need to be okay. That's just going to come your way sometimes. It's going to happen.

Someday I'm going to make a mini documentary about the guy that rates one on everything on BG. There's got to be a story there, and it's got to be worth 20 minutes at some point on film. But, you know, just what drives a person to literally rate thousands of games a year or one before they're released just because they can? There's got to be something there that, you know, that triggers that. But I think, I think, you know, one of the things that I, it's one of my favorite stories to tell.

And I think it addresses, you know, when you talk about your core principles, you know, when you talk about the curiosity element of things. And I preface the story by saying, I've made this up. It's going to sound really real. But apparently I was so desperate to have this point made that I was willing to create out of whole cloth. I've never been able to track down why I know this. But here we are. So a number of years ago, the band Rancid was working with Joe Strummer, the clash.

And Joe was doing some production work for them for some of their music. And somebody asked Joe Strummer, hey, you know, Rancid is doing the same. kind of music that the clash was, you know, in the 70s, you know, it's this, you know, it's punk with a little reggae and going to, are you frustrated? Are you upset that they're having success right now and, and you're not? And, you know, he kind of, you know, he kind of laughs and he says, look, 20-year-olds do not want to watch 50-year-olds on stage playing 30-year-old songs. Every generation has to have its own clash. And, and for me in gaming, you know, it's like, I could sit here and say, El Grande is the best area control game that's ever been made and everyone.

Fine. That's cool. No one's, you know, El Grande is still there. You can research it. But in the same way, like Kevin Smith would say, hey, I don't have to study those films in the 20s. I've got, you know, I've got Spielberg, who's taken all that distilled it down. And I can learn from Spielberg, everything from that in a better format. You know, you've got to be able to have a career in this industry and game industry, you have got to be able to look at everything with fresh eyes and get excited about it. And even if it is simply a repackaging or a tightening of something that has existed before, we can still celebrate that because people are still going to be discovering

that thing. And they can go back and play those other games. They still exist. You can find them. But as a person who works in gaming as a career, you know, the people that I see get burned out of the people that can't capture that curiosity, they can't sustain that curiosity over time, can't, you know, look at something and say, yeah,

it's like this, but there's, you know, what's the thing that's new and exciting, unique, and different about that game, that's going to make it relevant to people in 2024. And that's,

you know, if you want a career in gaming at the end of the day, you know, if you're going to be doing this for 20 or 30 years, you have got to be excited about what you're working with and the products that are out there in this industry in general, not just the stuff you work on. And finding that passion and finding that stuff out there

and being in love with it is what will sustain you through. Well, I cannot think of a better place to wrap up this podcast, Alex. That was great. So just to close out, where people want to find more of your stuff or see the world projects you're working on or learn anything else, is there somewhere to direct them to? I'm pretty much a Facebook creature of creature of habits.

So certainly my personal is pretty much open to most anybody that wants to take a look. Amigo.coms is our website for Amigo. And that's like I said, we'll have a renovation. We'll have a brand new version of that that I'm excited about. That actually we'll start doing some blog posting on. So you'll get to see a little bit of behind the scenes and some off-the-cuff stuff every week there as that rolls out the next month or so. And beyond that, I met a lot of shows. You know, if you're at Essen, I'm there. Pax Unplugged, I'm there.

You know, shows are the way of energizing me. I like the travel. I like the, you know, being out there and being in person and talking to people. So, you know, I am not hard to find one way or another. Awesome. Well, I'm not going to make it to Essen this year, but I will definitely see you at Pax Unplugged. And this was so much fun, Alex. Thanks again.

And, yeah, I'll see you soon. Sounds good. Thanks so much. Thank you so much for listening. I hope you enjoyed today's podcast. If you want to support the podcast, please rate, comment, and share on your favorite podcast platform,

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along with my 20 years of experience in the game industry and compressed it all into a book with the same title as this podcast, think like a game design. In it, I give step-by-step instructions on how to apply the lessons from these great designers and bring your own games to life.

If you think you might be interested, you can check out the book at think like a game designer.com or wherever find books or something.