Think Like A Game Designer - Amy Lowe — Finding Your X Factor, Marketing with Heart, and Serving the Right Players (#87)

Episode Date: July 10, 2025

About AmyAmy Lowe is a marketer, strategist, and lifelong nerd whose career spans over two decades helping brands connect with audiences in meaningful ways. Though she’s worked across industries, Amy found her passion in the tabletop gaming space as the marketing and communications manager for the Game Manufacturers Association (GAMA). Now she’s bringing hard-won insights about brand strategy, customer research, and authentic positioning to help game publishers and designers not just sell more games—but build sustainable, trusted brands. In this episode, we explore why marketing isn’t just promotion but the vital bridge between your company and your community, how to identify your X factor, and why the courage to lean into your authentic voice is the key to long-term success. Whether you’re launching your first game or trying to grow a studio, Amy’s wisdom will give you a roadmap for connecting with players in real, human ways. 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 Amy Lowe. I first met Amy when she was serving as the Marketing and Communications Manager for the Game Manufactors Association, better known as Gamma, and I realized that she brought with her a wealth of experience as a marketing strategist from a variety of different industries. She is bringing that expertise to the tabletop gaming space, and I thought it was a perfect opportunity to share some of those insights with you.

We take a deep dive into marketing, and we try to break it down in a way that is actually applicable to you as someone who is publishing or designing or creating games specifically. we go through a lot of the terminology that maybe sounds like buzzwords to you, like brand strategy, marketing strategy, competitive analysis, jobs to be done. Those kinds of things that are maybe a little bit inaccessible, we bring it down to earth and we show how this can impact the direct perception of your business. We talk about how to do customer interviews, how to align around a brand vision and an authentic identity. We talk about the details of doing competitive analysis, of how to pick which social platforms

to approach how to think about your X factor and the one thing that's going to differentiate you from your competition. I really think Amy was an incredible guest because she's bringing a diversity of experience from outside the gaming industry, but she shares that same love and passion of sharing information and helping the tabletop game industry specifically to grow and learn from each other. So I really know you're going to love this interview. There's a lot more that's coming.

Amy and I have talked about some other collaborations to help share more of these insights. So stay tuned for more. But without any further ado, here is Amy Lowe. Hello and welcome. I'm here with Amy Lowe. Amy, it's great to finally get you on the podcast. Thanks so much for having me, Justin. Yeah.

So you and I met, you actually reached out to me as part of an initiative that you were creating through the Gamma organization to help educate and inform the community. And had really, you really impressed me with how much thought you had put into the marketing and outreach and structuring of what Gamma org could be. And we'll talk a little bit about that as well as, you know, just kind of helping to educate the community. And it was clear that you and I shared a lot of values in terms of the, you know, wanting to help people, you know, to basically live their, these dream lives of being able to make games and build a community. but that there's a lot of skills that people don't have and trying to help them to gain those skills was kind of what we initially bonded over.

So that's kind of the pretext here. But you talk to me a little bit about your background, but you're a little bit more of an unusual guest. Your background doesn't really come from the gaming industry originally. So maybe let's talk a little about your origin story and then kind of get us, bring us up to the present. Yeah. So I am a marketer, strategist, and a lifelong nerd.

So I kind of stumbled into the tabletop industry. I went to Gen Con for the first time last year, actually. And the energy and vibe there was just amazing. And it was something that I wanted to be a part of. So I started looking for jobs in tabletop. And I became the marketing incomes manager at Gamma. And so, you know, a little bit different path than many people in this industry. But I've spent over 20 years helping bring.

brands connect with audiences in meaningful ways outside of tabletop. And I really just want to bring that experience to the tabletop space since there's such a need for it. Yeah, and I cannot emphasize this enough, right? This is an area where a lot of people come into the tabletop gaming space because they're passionate about tabletop games, right? And they maybe have some expertise as a player or as a store owner and someone who really kind of just loves what they're doing.

But a lot of the fundamentals of business, some of the core skills. of which marketing is clearly one of them are something a lot of us have to learn kind of on the back end or stumble our way through or don't have a really great understanding of. And so when we started having these conversations, I knew that you were the right person. I think your background

coming into this as a nerd and yes, loving what this community has, which is the thing that keeps me in tabletop, right? There's a lot of other places you can make a lot more money than in tabletop gaming, but the community and the supportiveness and the incredible people and group that we built here.

is worth fighting for. It's worth salvaging from businesses and learning the business skills to help make it succeed and thrive. So I appreciate you being a part of this community. And I know you've got a lot of value to add. And our audience will see all of that over the coming hour or so. Thank you. So let's start broadly.

Okay. Because I'll say from my side, right, I love making games. I love directly connecting with the players. I love the whole process of solving those problems and creating these experiences. But I have in the past, I felt this very, I don't know, ickiness around marketing. Like this feels like there's this vibe to it that's like, ugh, I'm trying to like push myself on you. I'm trying to sell stuff.

And it feels like the chore I have to do, not the fun part of what I have to do. And, you know, so let's talk broadly. What is marketing? How do you view it as a broad sense? And then we can start to dig into some strategy and why people should be thinking about or how people might be thinking about it's a little more helpful than the way I came into this front. Yeah, yeah, for sure. So a lot of people are like you and they kind of conflate marketing with just promotion. So promotion is like ads, social posts, email blasts, things like that.

But at its core, marketing is really the bridge between your company and the people that you want to serve. So it's everything from how you want to understand your audience, how you want to position your brand in the market, how you can create demand for games, build long-term relationships, and even differentiate yourself for competitors. So marketing kind of encompasses all of that. And then a strategy kind of encompasses even more. So a strategy, a marketing strategy can include things like the brand strategy, audience segmentation, product positioning, the channel strategy, the content, campaign planning, what the customer experience is like, how you engage your community, and then, you know, like analytics and feedback loops.

So all of that is part of marketing. All right. So that's a lot. That's a lot. It's a lot. So I want to take it. I want to take it and break it down piece by piece. And I think the first thing I want to talk about is just like what I think was for me,

because I played up the naive version of this that I came into it with. But what you hit on was something that was a big realization for me was that marketing is not about like me pushing a message to you. It's about me being able to find and serve the community I want to serve and to be able to let them know that I have something for them. And the reverse is true also, right? To let people know where I'm not the thing for them, where you are not, this is the product that's not for you. It's also to repel as well as to attract. And that those knowing how to do that and just be able to better serve the people I want to serve, that's what marketing is.

And it helped me to really shift how I feel about the activity. It helped me to really refocus the activity. A common challenge a lot of game designers face is they try to make a game that's kind of for everybody. Like, oh, yeah, everybody can play this game. Everyone's going to love it. You're like, well, if you're trying to make something for everybody, you're really making something for nobody. And so marketing is another piece of that.

So I think that's, you know, when you think about marketing strategy, understanding, okay, how do I identify the people I want to serve? How do I find those people? how do I ensure that I'm actually serving them and meeting their needs and then do that in a way that continues to actually support a business and ideally iterate and get better. So that's kind of a bit of my reframing and feel free to push back if I missed anything there. But that's kind of now how I think about marketing in this broader picture. Yeah. So you used a few words here that people use a lot, but I don't know that people have a clear definitions of. So I'm going to push on a couple of these things.

You use the word brand. You know, how do you define? a brand, how do you establish your brand? So what is a, how should people think about brand broadly? Like, what does it, what does brand mean to you and when we're thinking about in these terms? So brand strategy and branding is all about who you are and what you stand for and what you sound like. So when you're talking to your audience, how are you talking to them? Are you coming across as really corporate? Are you really casual and fun? Are you kind of weird and awkward? you know, all of those things can make up your brand. So it's really defining, defining those parts.

Yeah. So let me see if this, you know, it encompasses a lot of these components. When I try to think about what I think of like brand broadly, it's sort of, I view it as a promise, right? There's a, there's an implied promise that I'm making to my audience. that is I'm going to provide this, this and this. I'm going to be perceived as this, this, this and this. And so that the power of a brand is the degree to which that trust and understanding is

greater than somebody just coming up and seeing something cold for the first time, right? Why people will pay so much more for, you know, Nike or Coca-Cola or whatever, right? It's, you know, it's a shoe with sugar water. Maybe there's some quality difference, but a lot of it is like, I know what I'm going to get here. And they've made an implied promise that this is going to be at a certain quality level. It's going to give me a certain status. It's going to show up in a certain way and that I will, that differentiates it from the market. How does that resonate with the kind of the way you think about it? Yeah. I think that's probably more along the positioning part of it, right? So like how are you going to

stand out from your competitors and like Nike and Apple and all of that have almost cult of personalities, right? Where they have brand loyalists and everything. But that's, that's all because of how they've position themselves and because they've defined their audience very well. Okay. So let's bring this because obviously, yeah, I brought in the big dogs here who are like the defining iconic brands of our era, right, or, you know, for many years now. But let's bring it home because a lot of people listening to this, they're individual game designers.

They are running game companies. There's, you know, to varying degrees. Maybe it's, you know, small company to big companies. I know our audience includes quite a bit and quite a range. But let's say, and feel free to just. you know, we can use me as an example here, right? That's Stonebley Entertainment. We run a company, got a small game of things. What does it mean when I want to start thinking about my marketing strategy and my brand

and you're kind of consulting me or someone generically out there? How do we approach it? What should what should we be thinking about? How do we, what's step one, you know, and we'll go from there. Well, well, step one is acknowledging that you need a strategy. So without it because without a strategy, you can easily end up chasing shiny objects and kind of doing what's trendy instead of what works. And that's what happens to a lot of companies,

I think especially in Tabletop, is they start copying what other companies have done because they saw that it worked for them, but they do it without understanding why the strategies work for the competitor, right? So when I work with companies and develop a strategy, the goal is to drill down and focus, your time and energy on what matters and then attracting the right audience and kind of building that

trust. But it also lets you create a roadmap that's not just for a single game, which also happens quite commonly in Tabletop is, you know, there's, yay, we did a successful game. And so you replicate that across the board and that's it. And you want to create like a sustainable company, right? So you want more than just like a roadmap for a game. You want a roadmap for the entire company with then strategies for each game launch or kind of like a go-to market strategy. So when I start, I start my strategies always with having conversations with leadership and staff because I want to learn their perceptions of the brand. So it's always a really interesting part of what I do because so often leadership and staff have one idea of what the brand encapsulates. But then when I talk

to customers, they have a totally different idea. So there's this misalignment that happens a lot. And it's common. So that's kind of where I start is just talking. I have conversations. Okay. So what kinds of questions would you ask in this conversation? So I'll get some background on the company. I'll get the staff, about who they think their audiences or their customer demographic is. I'll ask them why they think people use their company or why do they buy their games or things like that. It's a very iterative conversation and I'll try to drill down and really see where they think they are, their company is and who their market is.

And then when I have conversations with customers, which are for the personas, then there's always like a misalignment. And so it's important to recognize that and call it out and show them how they can get alignment moving forward. Okay. So in this case, we're talking about a company that has some establishment already, right? This is a process that you would do with a company that exists. They have some sales. And then you would talk. So the leadership and we get at an individual members of the team,

We'll ask them these questions. And then when it comes to identifying customers to build customer personas, then how do you pick which customers get interviewed here and have conversations with? And I'll preface this with a challenge that I'm facing or often that is pretty common, which is like the people who I can reach the most easily and talk to are not necessarily representative of the customer base at large. We have a very active Discord and a lot of our super fans and we will talk with them regularly and we love their feedback and it's super valuable,

but also they represent, you know, kind of a small super engaged segment. And sometimes if we just listen to them, it would actually, you know, destroy the brand or destroy the games if we didn't incorporate, not just their views,

but the views of a broader audience, the person who's hanging out playing the games at their kitchen table, but isn't ever joining our Discord or answering an email from us or anything. So when you had, this is sort of how do you identify like who these customers are and which ones to listen to and how to wait their different opinions, things like that. Yeah, sure. Well, I want to take a step back because we've been talking about personas, but we didn't really define that. So when we are referring to audience segments, we use personas to kind of represent each audience segment. So they're semi-fictional representations of your customers. And so when I am starting my persona research and I've talked with staff and everything,

I conduct customer interviews and I go to everybody that I possibly can. So that can be past customers. It can be current customers. It can be your evangelists. It can be anybody that's had an experience with your brand. So I like to put calls out on different ways. Sometimes it's social media. Sometimes it's newsletters.

Sometimes it's going back through feedback that have come in through customer support where people have been very critical or had negative experiences because you don't want to just talk to the happy people. You want to hear what the complaints were and try to find your pain points and everything else that other customers have experienced, right? So to your point, you don't just talk to your super fans, you talk to everybody. And I try to do about 10 interviews in total of customers so I can try to get a broad swath of customer experiences. And do you have like a common script throughout these or is it more, just more organic? Like what questions are you asking here? Yeah.

So when I create the personas, I start with jobs to be done. And jobs to be done is part of product-led growth, which is common in tech. And that's where the product itself drives the customer acquisition and conversion and retention. So it's very much poll marketing instead of. push marketing. And in the context of tabletop, that would be creating opportunities for players to experience the game firsthand, allowing the quality of the game to come through and naturally lead to sales. So it's kind of a different frame than a lot of folks work from. But the jobs to be done is really understanding what the customers are trying to accomplish when they

hire your product. So, so why do they say, today's the day I'm going to go by, I'm going to go by this game. Why are they, why are they buying it today? So it's, that's kind of the starting point. Right. And so this is, it's worth, it's worth lingering here, right? So again, I think you did explain this, but I'm going to linger on it longer because it's not that easy. Like the phrase jobs to be done is common terminology in space, product like growth. But what, what I, so another way to kind of say that is like, you know, I'm buying something for a reason. And it's specifically understanding what that motivation is that's pushing me to buy, which is going to really help us understand and refine the product to make sure that the product I'm making serves that need directly.

And so this is easier in a space where like, okay, I'm hungry. I need food at a reasonable price. So I'm going to go to McDonald's and grab something, right? Or there may be a different thing. It's like, I need to get my kids fed right now. and I don't have time for stuff, so I'm going to go do this thing. Games are, there's a little bit of more fuzziness to it, right? Like, why am I buying game A versus game B, right? The job to be done is a little, I mean, there are elements to this, right? I want to have a game night.

I want to make sure that I can, you know, have a good experience there, or I want to connect with my kids, or I want to just have an interesting strategic experience. Is it still that? Is that the level of jobs to be done, or is there a different level to this that we would dig into? Yeah, so jobs to be done really just goes beyond demographics, and it asks what emotional or functional job is the product doing for them. So maybe it's like you said, like maybe I want a game that brings my family together every Sunday night. Or maybe I had a rough day at work and I just need a game where I can kind of decompress. Or maybe it's the world is a dumpster fire right now and I just need to escape, which is all totally valid.

Yeah, yeah. So it's interesting because there's there's a lot of so to me like I've spent some amount of time and I had I've had I've had guests in the podcast who've helped to really innovate this idea of a player personas right and this is pretty common in game design right that we'll have different player personas. So the people will be familiar with. When I first guest on the podcast of Mark Roswater who had the idea of like Timmy, Johnny and Spike that there's a this is a persona that wants to you know have these cool experiences or they want to. want to prove and achieve things and, you know, be a competitor or they want to have like, you know, interesting combinations and discover stuff. And then there's, there's these different personas that that you can use as a game designer because your goal is game designers always to craft experiences, right? That's the, that's the real coin of the realm in the work that that we do. So, so it sounds like this is very tied to that where it's like, okay, what are the experiences that we're trying to create? And, but it's coming at it from the other side. What are the experiences that the customer is trying to receive? What is it that

they're looking for, and then hopefully, of course, those two things interact and feed into each other. Yeah, very much so. I tend to not, so in marketing, there tends to be some folks choose to focus on archetypes instead of like the personas or the archetypes are their personas. I like to have conversations with the customers directly to create those personas instead of just kind of relying on these archetypes because archetypes are great in theory. and they're generic. That's just not going to teach you anything or show you anything about your customer, and it's certainly not going to help you market towards them.

So the personas and the jobs to be done are kind of all part of that holistic interview strategy. Yes. Yeah, I think that's right. And I've said this. So wait, I have my own breakdown in my book about the kind of player motivations of, you know, aspiration, expression, connection, immersion, and growth. But I'm very clear about this, that those, if archetypes or kind of categories are not tried and true that this is one person that is about this, it's just a framework to be able

to help you analyze the problem from different perspectives, right? And so I think that's where archetypes can be useful because they force our brain to look at different angles. But I agree with you. I think it's a mistake to have them become, you know, a straight jacket or kind of humans don't fall into these archetypes cleanly. Any kind of categories we make are going to have some arbitrariness to them. But in this world, you're talking to customers.

So you're going to speak to 10 customers. You're going to hear their feedback. You're going to ask them these questions. You're going to get some specific words from them. But then how do you different, you know, is a persona, then you're just making up a new, brand new archetype based on how you choose to group those 10 into whatever subcategories you want? Like what's the difference between a persona as you see it and an archetype?

as you maybe want to push against? So the archetypes are going to be just kind of more generic. I think some of them in marketing that exist are like the warrior or whatever. And they're just very, very broad representations of typical consumers. So when I have the interviews for the jobs to be done, I'll ask questions. And this process, again, is very iterative, right? So I base base my questions off of how they've answered and if I need to know more information. So that might look like something like asking them, you know, what do you look for when you choose a new game?

Or what's the last game you purchased? Where did you buy it from? What made you go into that store or to that website to buy it? Did you know when you went to the store that you were going to buy this specific game? And then, you know, just kind of going on from there. So just asking all of these questions to really drill deeper and then I start looking for patterns. So if I'm interviewing 10 people, you know, how many think one way or another and really kind of recognizing where those trends are and comparing different personas and seeing if they have different pain points. Do they have different goals, different pain points, all of that.

So it's really just looking for trends. And then when you see the trends like that, you know, that kind of helps you flesh. out the persona. Okay. So, I mean, it sounds like you've done this some now within the gaming space already. Are there any interesting trends or personas that you think might be, if not universally applicable, at least kind of some guideposts of like, hey, you've noticed some trends that people tend to, you know, for example, it seems to me from my now been in this industry for

20 some odd years, right? That it used to be that people would often go into a store, not knowing what game they want. The store owner would highlight some of the things that were there and would kind of be the curator that would then help them pick a game. Maybe they'd play it in the store and demo in the store, but then they would pick that game and then go forward. And I think it feels to me like the trend from my perception and talking to people is that it's actually gone the other way around, where now it's the players coming in, looking for something specific, which drives the store owner to carry the game more and go the other direction. Have you noticed any trends or, you know, feel

free to push back on that one? Or, you know, what do you see in the industry for? from the research that you've done in terms of how our personas generally evolving in the hobby game, tabletop game category specifically. Yeah, you know, it varies so much company to company because some companies have like those brand loyalists, right? Like just like Apple or Nike where they can tell, you know, they can tell you every game that that publisher has made. And others are just kind of like, you know, it's it's less of a brand.

and it's more of a game experience. So it varies greatly in this industry. But one thing that I think I see most commonly is that a lot of companies in this industry tend to just not be authentic. Like they're too afraid to lean into their brand and who they are and how their customers view them. And that's just something that you shouldn't be afraid to do. You might lose customers, but you're going to gain a whole bunch more of people who are way loyal to your brand.

So, yeah. Yeah. So let's let's dig into that for a second because I think this also, you know, one of the things I like to, obviously having you here as a marketing expert and helping people to navigate, you know, marketing and marketing strategies, part of the reason. But also one of the reasons I like to have guests from a variety of different backgrounds and industries is to find those things that are universal to the human condition and to our general process. of trying to make stuff. And this fear that you've identified of being authentic, right? This is true for all of us in all different aspects of life. Like, it is a business?

What do you think is it that people are afraid of here? Like, what is it that stopping somebody when, in fact, being able to have this authentic persona and be out there would make their businesses stronger and better? What do you think is stopping most people from being able to do that? I think it's just the fear of losing business. I mean, it's valid, right? Like, it's scary to think that you might lose customers if you say this or do this or act this way or put this social post online. So I think it's just a fear.

And I think people would find that if they lean into that authenticity more, it's going to build trust and it's going to build that loyalty. Yeah. So when you're advising a company to go down that road, like how do you get them past the sphere? Is there, you know, what's what's kind of the, because I can say, I mean, you know, we've definitely gone through different iterations of this as our company. And, you know, a lot of this has become me, you know, my Stoneblade as a brand and its own entity is very much tied to me personally, right? I founded the company. A lot of this is, you know, our mission as a company is to delight, connect, and inspire, you know, millions of people all around the world. And that's not just about making a fun game experience, but it's about things like these podcast conversations. conversations and designing and building in the open and being open when I mess up or we almost go bankrupt or we have these crises, right? And it is scary. And it was very hard to go out that road. Like, how would you help someone out there that's thinking about doing this sort of thing to like maybe take that first step or get the courage to figure out? And I'll put one other little

wrinkle into this, which is a lot of times people don't know what their quote unquote brand is and their authentic voice is, right? Like that's like, what does that even mean? Like, so how do you get somebody past that, that, that fear and uncertainty. Yeah. You know, it's, it's, that's, that's really where the customer interviews come in. Um, because they all, the customers will tell you how you, how you sound and what resonates about how you sound or, or what you say or what you do. And you can pull out those, you know, those little tidbits. And that's really what helps, I think, get, um, clients to the next part, to the next step. Um, it's really just listening to what the customer say. I've had, I've had, I've had companies say, well, you know, we want to come across as really professional and

we want to do this and we want to do that. And there's almost a coldness about them. But then when you talk to customers, they'll say, well, you know, every time I have an interaction, like, they're really helpful and they're really warm and kind. And it's like, well, you have this misalignment, right? Like, which one is it? Which one are you leaning into? But this is also where like establishing that brand voice is critical as well. You have to know. know how your brand talks and how it's going to relate to other people and how you're going to serve your customers and how you just use the language. What's your tone? How are you speaking? All of that. It all comes into play. So while a brand might think they're very like professional

and corporate, maybe the language they've been using isn't. And that's what's causing the misalignment. And that's what's resonating more with customers. So it's really just all about discovery. Yeah, fascinating. And I think that there's like, there's definitely a lot that resonates with me there in terms of, again, how I think about game design, because part of this is like, where do you stand in the marketplace? How are people going to perceive your game and what the experiences that they're creating?

And a lot of that comes up with the pre-set up and the framework, how you label the games, the artwork. We had one of the designers of Root, the game Root on the podcast recently and that, you know, he talked about this idea that, you know, the gameplay of Root is actually pretty cutthroat and pretty competitive. But the art is so adorable and cute that it lets people have the competitive experience without it feeling like, you know, it's a, it's the art was just like, you know, warriors and dragons and, you know, blood everywhere or whatever, right? And so it created an experience where families could have the experience they want of like a competitive game. but it made it more accessible and positioned it in a different sort of way. And so there's a lot of like these different aspects of, you know, art, design and positioning and, you know,

kind of even a title and where they find it on a store shelf and how you label something that influences that. And it sounds like what you're saying is like not only that, but also like how your, what your customer support auto reply is and how your logo looks and how the different, you know, where people can discover your thing and who of your staff is available and how available are they and that kind of stuff can all all feeds into the same same concepts that that

sound right yeah absolutely even you know and you were talking about you know your discord communities and things like that and how do you interact with people in in the community how what does your social media management look like what is your community building look like all of that all of it plays into it so so let me let me get at another part of this because you talked about social media managing and i immediately like felt a pang of anxiety like at the moment you said that right because it feels like so much work, right, and so much effort that has to go into this. And every time,

and I think for major corporations, they've got full-time social media managers and they've got everything happening. But for a lot of people in the game industry, like overhead's a big deal, the amount of people, everybody's wearing a lot of hats, and there seems like there's a new social media channel

every other week that I'm supposed to be on top of that I'm supposed to be posting on. And it's exhausting. And frankly, there's just not, you know, there's only so many hours in the day. How, you know, how should someone who's thinking about this as a kind of small to medium size company or even a solopreneur? Like, they, they need to put themselves out there. They need to work in their brand. They need to be putting on social. But also it's, you know, there's only so much that they can do. So how do you, how do you

address that? And again, even if somebody that's, you know, it's a long time and has a reasonable social presence, I'm still like, you know, I still feel anxiety when you talk about that. Yeah, and that's totally fair. And like you said, like every day there's a new social platform that you have to be on. Everybody is on right now, right? Don't, just don't. You can't do it all. You're not going to be able to do it all.

Don't try to be on every platform. Like pick two and try to be on there. And I mean, meta, for example, makes this really easy because you can just post in one spot and it goes to both Facebook and Instagram. or use social tools to, like Buffer. Buffer is free for, I think it's like up to three different platforms. So you can have something on Buffer and it can go to Blue Sky and it can go to Twitter and it can go to Facebook and Instagram and TikTok or wherever you want. But then also rely on your user-generated content, your UJC. So if you have those passionate fans, they're probably posting pictures and maybe creating TikToks and everything else. So like lean into that.

And you don't, like, you don't have to start from zero. You can, you can lean into what other people are creating and share it out. You know, just create those relationships because that's, that's the biggest part of it. And that's the whole point of social is to really make those connections and build those relationships and make people feel seen and heard and valued. So that's what I would suggest. Yeah. Okay. So that's great.

Like, you know, focus on a couple areas. Don't try to do everything. Try to do a couple things really well instead of try to do everything poorly. I have found an experiment with a lot of different platforms that my substack ended up being the one that really resonated, right? Because I like writing long form content. I like having more thoughtful discussions rather than the kind of little bite-sized snippets and stuff elsewhere. And we have platforms everywhere. But to me, that's the one that I spend most of my time on.

And podcasts like this, right, long-form conversations, which not everybody's going to listen to, but for the people that do it, you know, it's grown. And I've seen the difference of the amount of effort I put. into this versus return on terms of like audience growth and response and also like the enjoyment, right? I think, I think this is a big part of it. Like if it feels like a chore, if it feels like you're constantly struggling in a path, then it's going to be way hard to maintain. It's going to be way harder to do the things that like it takes years, right? I mean, I've been doing this podcast for five, six years now, more than that. And it took a while before we got a real audience and started growing. But I love these conversations. So it was fine. Right. And so finding, I think

there's something about finding something that like can, you can enjoy and you would be, willing to do even if the audience never grew. And that's sort of what, you know, maybe even plays into this idea of an authentic brand persona is like, hey, this is genuinely you. This is like these conversations are ones I would, they're just like, you and I had a conversation not that different from this when it was just meeting up at Gamma and having a chat. And so this is how I talk. This is the things I like to do.

So it makes it a lot easier. So I think that's another kind of piece of the, what can make your online presence and persona easier to develop and maintain is if it's something that you genuinely get some joy out of and learn from and resonate with. Absolutely. It brings that authenticity. And that's what, you know, that's what this is all about. You need to lead into that authenticity.

Yeah. And for those that have trouble with words like authenticity and what does it mean? How do I find it? Something I have found really helpful just as like a little hack is like, chase your energy. Like if you are doing something and at the end of it, when you're done with the thing, you're more energized and more excited, you're probably on the right path. And if you've done a thing and you just had your little corporate speak, blah, blah, blah, and you posted it and you're drained at the end and you feel like you're, you're,

you need to recover afterwards. There's probably some adjustments to make. And so just it's a, I find, I'd like to take these kind of fuzzy things and turn them into something that I can like know whether I'm on the right path or not. I'm an analytics, you know, kind of guide. So I can, I can measure my energy level a lot better than I can measure my authenticity level, if you know what I mean. So for whatever that's worth, that's kind of,

one of the little hacks I've learned. All right, I want to shift on to something else that you had just mentioned, which is about user-generated content, and I want to group it with, and I don't know if this fits exactly with the idea of product-led growth, but what I will, I think the way I view product-led growth or the topic I'm interested in, and you can let me know if it's not actually the same thing,

is the power of word of mouth, right? The idea that my marketing is not about me saying, hey, buy this thing, it's awesome. My marketing is the thing is so awesome that everybody that touches it wants to tell all their friends and then they tell their friends. And then that continues to grow. And I don't think that I think the tabletop industry has always required and thrived on that. Because, hey, it's a game.

I'm going to share it with friends if I think it's awesome. And I think it makes me look awesome to have it. It's another piece of the puzzle. So I'd like to kind of have a broad topic that, includes like how do you build something that encourages that user generated content slash word of mouth? And then feel free to correct me if I'm mistaken about what, if that's not what product-led growth means and or how these all tie together. Yeah. No, PLG is all about letting people experience things firsthand. So it would be in the context of tabletop, it'd be how can people experience your game or your product or whatever.

So that might look like print and play versions where you can offer like a simplified version of your game as a free download. They get to experience the game mechanics that way and can kind of trial it. Maybe it's like a one shot or however that looks. It could be free how to videos. So like watch it played or this is how you play it or kind of like that on RAM to learning how to play your game. Yeah. So it can be a number of different. Maybe it's going to GenCon and, you know, play.

playing the actual game. It can be a number of different things. Yeah. And so there's definitely these things for, you know, giving people the opportunity to try the thing and get excited about the thing. But I also think there's a piece to this that comes from like, how do you build a thing that is more likely to be shared? Right.

I think this is like, so I'll put some concepts out there that I spend a lot of time thinking about, which is, you know, when it's coming, if it's going to be, it's very platform dependent, right? If I know I'm going to be debuting a game at Gen Con, which for those listening, we have our new Ascension Legends will be available at Gen Con. We have a couple of other surprises. It's our 15-year anniversary.

So this Gen Con 20-25, big deal, lots of cool stuff coming. So I'm spending a lot of time thinking about it. And I say, okay, well, I want to have something that has a table presence that's going to draw people in. And I've told the story before, but the little shiny beads that come in a game of Ascension, I'll just rewrite the story

because to find one, I don't think I shared it with you, when we first showed off the game at Gamma, 15 years ago, to distributors to see if it was something that they would want to buy, and if it was worth it for us to invest all of my life savings, frankly, to print ascension, see if they liked it. And we didn't have like counters for points, for the honor points. And so we went to Michael's, like the store with all the little chachis and,

you know, craft store. And they had these little beads that were like going, they go in like an aquarium. these little plastic things going in the aquarium. And they were kind of shiny and cool. Like, okay, we'll use those for the prototype. And then once we had them there, everyone came by and said, oh, my God, this is so cool. Are these in the game?

And I was like, yes, yes, they are. No idea how to make them. No idea how to get them in the game. But it was a fortunate, you know, a thing that then that those beads really drew people in and made some table boards. So I often think a lot about like table presence as one of the ways that helps people to draw at spread. with streaming platforms and people streaming online, I often think about, okay,

what makes people more likely to stream games? And like how do they, what makes it more like that more shareable from that sense? And so I don't know if there's just kind of giving you some, some touch points here. How do you think about making something that's more inclined that people will share it or pay attention to it beyond just the core of the product itself?

I think it's really getting the buy-in from your, your loyal customers. And then I think they become your evangelist. And then people share things when they really like things, right? Like how many social posts have you seen on your feed where your friends do something? They play a game or they go to a restaurant and they share what they're eating or they share what they're playing. So like I think it's really that social proof. It's what are people talking about?

How are they framing it? And I think that's what you can lean into. And that's the user generated content, the UGC part of like the social marketing. stuff, right? How can you leverage that and get people excited about things? Maybe somebody has opened the box when they opened the box to Ascension and they were like, oh my gosh, these little bead things are the coolest things ever, right? Like maybe they videoed that and they put it on their Instagram. So it's, I think it's just finding that and finding those people who are so excited about something and then leveraging that. How can you, how can you repurpose that content? Do you share

it out, do you, hey, send them a message and say, hey, this is, this is such a cool video. Here's a free whatever on us. And then they get even more excited, right? Like, there's all kinds of different little things that you can do to really leverage that. So in the, to your point of like, Jen Con's coming up and, you know, you, you want all these, this cool footage and people to experience things. So how can you get your, your evangelists excited about what's happening at Jen Con? What can you do to start building the hype now so that people are talking. about it before Jen Con. So, you know, just things to think about.

Okay, well, any evangelists listening, we've got cool, exclusive promos, exciting new stuff. We'll be teasing all the way up until the JedCon, August 2025. So this will be the beginning of the process. Yeah, exciting. Okay, I appreciate a lot of those, you know, kind of concrete tips and ideas. And hopefully these are spawning ideas in the audience as they are with me. So let's go and circle back up to some more of the concepts of like, you know, kind of big picture concepts. We've talked about marketing.

We've talked about marketing strategy, personas, jobs to be done, how to start, how to conduct a customer interview, the importance of doing interviews within your own team. As you before I move forward, is this something that you need like an outside person to do or can like somebody just do this, you know, kind of ask these questions to themselves, ask these questions there? Is it really important to have somebody that's not as close to the project to kind of come in and do this? I think it's helpful to have somebody that has experience in it, but knowing that not everybody, especially in Tabletop, has a budget for somebody to come in and help. You know, there's people you can hire for just like a little bits of it or you can just try to DIY. I mean, there's, you know, resources online that you can always look up and, you know, just kind of do whatever you need to do to get the information. but getting the information is just integral to growing and kind of creating your overall vision for for your company.

Yeah. And then when we're when we're looking at a variety of different projects for a company, right? So, you know, there's a company brand. There's the game brands within that company, right? And then there's, and so each of those things in principle aligns and builds something together. But sometimes it's, it's, it's, it pulls different directions. So I'll give another example from my own company, since that's obviously the thing I'm closest to, right? So we launched the company with Ascension 15 years ago, 15th anniversary coming up.

And that Ascension is kind of a core fantasy brand. It appeals to people who play games like Magic at the Gathering, which is my origin story. But within a single box experience, it's got the kind of deep strategy game that'll last a lifetime. But, you know, definitely in the, it's a good, good gateway game, but still, you know, in the hobby game space. We then have built games that are more, you know, digital focus like SoulForge Fusion, which worked with Richard Garfield and built this digital version of the game. The original version of SoulForge was pure digital.

A little bit of a deeper experience appeals to some different, some overlapping, but somewhat different audiences. And then we built a game like, you got to be kidding me. Or that is more of a family friendly game that was in Target. and, you know, more mass market. Now, it's all under the same Stoneblade brand. And we have other games that, you know, and so there was a question debated within our company of should we create like an imprint, right?

Should we create like a, you know, a rubber-bopper brand, you know, games or something, right? Where it's like, this is not, you know, to let you know that you got to be kidding me is going to have a different kind of experience than, than Ascension or Soulforce Fusion or Shards of Infinity. How do people think, how should people think about that? Or is it, you know, how important is to have a cohesive overall

company brand versus focusing on your games first. This is another kind of piece to this puzzle that I guess we haven't dug into as much. Yeah. So I think, I mean, there needs to be some cohesion, right? Because the overall brand is going to kind of inform how all the other brands under it market and talk and sound and all of that. So I think you need before the marketing strategy, hopefully you have like a strategic, strategic plan of the growth of your company and what all of that looks like.

And then you can kind of, you know, create the marketing from that. And then your strategic document should actually focus on what, how does growth look? How are these brands if they're very different? How are they going to, are they going to play together? Are they going to be separate? Like, what does that look like? So hopefully there's been like a pre-marketing strategy done that's more just strategic planning. And if not, that would be a great place to start too for people who are smaller and just starting out.

Yeah, but again, this is one of those things like, yes, I love making plans and no plan survives contact with the enemy or maybe the, I think it was Mike Tyson. Like everyone's got a plan until they get punched in the face. You know, we've had a lot of these strategies where it's like, you don't know until you put stuff out and get customer feedback on the things, right? So I think it's not quite as easy as that. Like, yeah, I think, I guess there's, maybe there's just like an iterative relationship there, right? You can kind of create a plan. And, yeah, go ahead.

And iterate. I mean, absolutely. Like, that's, you can't expect to cover every possible contingency when you're making any of these strategies, right? Like, things are going to come up and change. And attitudes are going to change. Economy, the economic conditions are going to change. There's a lot of, there's a lot of variance.

And so you just have to, you just have to iterate. And, you know, okay, so now, like, now what are your customers experiencing that whatever tariffs are game? I don't even know what we're at now. 30%, 200, 200, 500%? I don't know what we're at. Oh, yeah. How are people adapting? What are they doing?

Because your strategy is going to, it's going to evolve, you know, even to your point. Like, there's new social platforms. Does one resonate with you more than another? Has your brand evolved? Are you coming out with a different product entirely? So, like, how do you pivot? It's, yeah, it's all about just being flexible and knowing that you have to keep having these conversations and you have to keep checking in with your customers and talking with them and hearing what they're experiencing and what they want. Yeah.

So is there, is there, are there, I know there's no hard answer here, but are there rules of thumb in terms of how you would, what that rhythm should be of, of, and communicating with customers, what the rhythm should be of or how much, you know, what does a. pre-planning strategy document look like for a typical company in this space? You know, is it a is it a one-pager and you got four quadrants to it? Is it a is it a PowerPoint deck of 20 slides? Is it a deep research, you know, 30-page competitive analysis thing? Is there no single answer here? Like what? I'm just trying to like make this sort of concrete for people because I worry sometimes that

analysis paralysis can cause more harm than good. Yeah, so if I were somebody just starting out and just creating a game, I would put together. I'd start with a business plan. What do you want it to look like? And let that serve as kind of your basis for moving forward. And there's all kinds of templates to create a business plan. You can go to the Small Business Administration and they have groups of retired executives called Score and they will, they work for free and they will sit down and help you create this. So, you know, there's support and there's free things where you need it.

And, I mean, talk with other people in the industry. What have they done? What do they wish they would have done differently, right? Like, learn from other people's mistakes because if there's one thing about tabletop, it's that everybody is willing to share. And it's unlike any industry I have ever worked in coming from tech and real estate, you know, where it's totally different. Tabletop is just everybody's nice.

And everybody got into it because it's their passion project. It's something they love doing. And so people are very willing to share their experiences and are very much willing to say, learn from my mistakes. Don't repeat what I did that, you know, ruined this or was this or had this negative effect. So just like talk to people, ask questions, have conversations. People are there to help. Yeah.

No, I love that. And I think that the, you know, that is very, very. much right. This industry, it's part of what keeps me excited about it, is how open and supportive everybody is, how much it really does feel like, you know, we're not competitors in the space where, you know, we're here to lift each other up. And if there is a competition, it's more in the, in the friendly side. It's like, we're playing a game together than it is a, I'm trying to crush you side of the side. So, and having built games in digital side and Web3 side and corporate stuff and everything, very, very different experiences all around.

So my heart is always going to be in tabletop for that reason. Yeah. All right. So then I want to jump into another one of the kind of buzzwords or phrases that we can hopefully make concrete review, which is a competitive analysis. How do we think about competitive analysis? What does that mean and how could someone go about doing it in a way that's practical and useful?

So competitive analysis is all about learning. how to stand out, how your brand or company, your products can stand out. So the way I do competitive analysis is I'll look at five to seven companies generally. I'll look at their style, their audience interaction, how they sound, things like that. And I'll look at their campaigns and messaging. So how do they present themselves? You know, a lot of companies are on Kickstarter. how do they present their crowdfunding? How are they on social media? What is their presence like at conventions?

And then I'll look at their engagement too. So are they going for long-term fans? Are they trying to build like long-term relationships? Or are they just looking for short-term backers? What do people say about them? You know, go on Reddit. Everybody has an opinion about everything, every single brand on Reddit. So look there. What about on board game geek or Discord or, you know, social media or wherever? And then look at the gaps. So are there any missed opportunities? Are there areas that they're not speaking to? And so once you look at your competitors, you can kind of drill down and ask yourself, you know, what do you offer that no one else does right now in the market? What can you or what can you own that others are ignoring? And,

And are you clear on why people should follow you, your company, your brand instead of someone else? So it's not just like, you know, the game's theme or the mechanics or whatever. It's competing on all of these things like customer experience and trust and just the overall vibe or feeling that a brand or company evokes. So, yeah. Can you give me some kind of concrete example here, like either some other company product or other thing where it's like what like what does a successful answer here look like a successful answer well there isn't one because you know when you do your competitive analysis you're going to be looking at the companies that most

closely resemble yours so it varies depending on what what your company or brand is um but it's it's really just kind of looking at at every you know, analyze them. See, go on their website. What do they do that you like or what do they, what are they missing? You know, it's it's kind of all the things like that. You know, if you went onto, let's say, dice companies websites, right? Like there's how many, you know, there's a ton of dice companies in this space. So each, but each one has, most of them have different brands that they stand out from one another one way or another. Some might lean into more of the storytelling.

Some might lean into more of just the price point. Some might do more customization or offer customization option. Right. Like it's so look at what's missing. What is missing when you look at all of the different competitors and where is there space for you and your brand? How do they talk? How can you lean in here?

So it's just, yeah, it just kind of depends on what you find. Like there's no right or wrong answer or there's not really a specific way to do it. It's just kind of absorbing and learning what your competitors are doing and then finding those gaps and ways for your product to fit into those gaps. So let's see how this connects with something that I advocate very much as game designer and for people that are starting in the space where when I, When you're working on a new game, I always tell people they need to start with their elevator pitch. And what that means is you're kind of figuring out like, what is the thing that's at the heart of this experience and how am I going to sell it to a customer?

And the truth is you don't know that for sure when you're starting, which you need to pick a kind of direction. And that helps to guide your design process. And then as you iterate through it, you're going to get better and better at it. And a lot of times an elevator pitch is, you know, it's like A meets B, you know, with C. Or it makes A meets B without C, right? Or, you know, like you're able to find these things, uh, where you can, you know, so, you know, Ascension, it's like a magic draft where all the cards, you all start from the same position.

You don't have to buy any cards, right? There's one version of that. And again, that's the way I would sell it to someone who understands what magic is. I would say something very different to someone who was, you know, buying and a more casual player, but that this idea of like understanding where, how you relate to the things people already know and how you differentiate from it. And that finding that sweet spot where it's familiar yet different where there's like I'm using the familiar thing to flag you as, hey, if you like this is a good chance

you're going to like what I'm providing. And then what's the little twist, right, that I'm pushing there. And that could be a variety of things. It could be mechanics. It could be that, oh, wow, it's like, it's like, you know, this game, but it's in space. Or it could be that it's like, oh, wow, this is a game that I know is going to have no expansions because I don't want to keep buying expansions.

Or it's a game I know is going to have a million expansions because I want to be able to keep buying space, right? Like some things that can like create these like little checkpoints in people's heads to say, okay, this is something that's going to appeal to me. Oh, that's interesting. I hadn't thought of that before. Let me go down this road. Right.

Is it similar to that process? Yeah, to an extent. So when I do create the personas, for example, I have one. part within each persona that's called the one thing. So what is the one thing that is going to, that this person is going to say that's going to make them buy your game, right? So maybe it's, I'm going to buy Ascension because whatever, right, whatever that defining thing is. And that could be like because it's like something or because it's not. But then there's another part of the strategy when I go into brand positioning that talks about the X factor. So what's the thing that

sets you apart? What is that X factor? And so I think what you're saying is kind of both just in a different way. So yeah, I agree. Yeah. Yeah, I wasn't expected to be a one-to-one, but again, I'm trying to relate it to things that I have studied deeply. And I think it also just, I think this is one of the other things that I wanted to emphasize through our conversation is, you know, how closely product and marketing need to be married together, right? That there is a, it is not like, I make a product and then I market it. That's like, that's a mistake to think down that way. It's like I'm building a product to serve a specific market.

And in the idea of as I iterate and design that product, it is through both communicating with those customers, learning to better understand those customers, refining the product, and that the product itself is not just the experience when I'm interacting with it or playing the game or rolling the dice or whatever, but it's the whole thing from the how does this customer discover the product to the purchase experience to the, you know, what happens after they purchase and how that like all of those pieces form

cohesively, you know, this sort of product market fit thing. And that I think is something a lot of people miss that I knew. Anyway, I kind of wanted to sort of connect those dots. for people. Yeah, yeah. And what you're talking about there is, is the buyer life cycle, right? The buyer life cycle is the awareness, consideration, decision, and delight stages. So when I do

personas, for example, I look at what that persona is doing through each stage of the life cycle and what kind of content we need to create. So, you know, in marketing, we have funnels, right, with the top being awareness and the bottom being decision and delight. So what does it look like and what kind of messaging do they need to receive at each stage. So, yeah, taking all of that into account is important. It's really important. Awareness, consideration, decision, delight. I love that.

I have not heard that one before. So in the, are there any, like, we've covered a lot of ground here, both kind of at a, you know, high strategic level with some, you know, granular action steps. Are there any other things that in terms of just like quick wins or quick insights that somebody who is, you know, listen to this and there's like, okay, cool, I know I want to start talking to my customers. I know I want to start finding some better position results.

Are there any things that like, you know, would be like, all right, let's, let's, you know, start doing something like this or experiment with something like this. If you were going to kind of pick one to three things, there's like someone who's not really is experienced in marketing or is just like, you know, paid some influence. or bought some ads and realizes now that they need to do some better work here, what would you push them towards as kind of a starting point? Yeah, probably be intentional. So don't just do what the competition is doing or what somebody told you

worked for their brother's second cousin's nephew. Be intentional with what you're doing and find that authenticity. However that looks to you, right? Like each brand is going to be different. So don't try to sound like another brand. lean into like you said Justin I mean like all of your your company values are aligned with you as a person because that's how it started and if that's how they are that hey that's great like that's a great place to start so if you're not sure where to go or how you want your company to be just start

with what's authentic to you so those would those would be the biggest things and then look at what your competition is doing and where are those gaps I mean that's that's a really easy thing to do just go to their websites, look online, do some social listening, how are people talking about them? And just do that. Those are three really quick and easy things. That's great. And I think I want to, I feel like I'd be remiss if I didn't talk about AI's impact on marketing and the tools that are available to people now because I think that it has really transformed a lot of this space. I've even seen some research that doing, this kind of customer persona interview

that you can actually do this with AI posing as one of those customers and it actually will not as good as talking to a real customer but it can actually lead to some pretty useful results. Are there, is there any experience that you have with using AI and helping with any steps of this process or anything that you'd recommend or maybe recommend away from? Maybe the idea I just suggested is a terrible one.

But what have you found or how has this impacted the way you approach these things, if at all? I think AI potentially has a place with streamlining things. And I think it's great for, you know, if you have 10 customer conversations, you could probably put that all into chat GPT and it can pull out the insights for you. So I think there's a way to, if you're short on time, you know, to your point of solopreneur kind of person. I think there's a way to streamline things and help it let you work smarter. I think that talking with actual people is going to be the most beneficial. So I wouldn't let my conversation with AI inform any sort of persona or strategy. Because you need to hear from people on what their experiences are and hear about their emotions

and what kind of what is evoked when they play your game or are searching for a game. I think you just need humans for that. So I think there's ways to help you work smarter, but I wouldn't rely on it for writing a strategy or, yeah, anything like that. Yeah, and I found that it's so important that you feed the right level of information in, right? That's like really, you know, as you said, direct customer feedback that's from real humans, having your, you know, when it is, what are your values and what are the things that matter, specific things about your product. If you're going to try to use AI for these things and you

just sort of start from a generic place, like what should my marketing strategy be, you're going to get generic bland. You're going to do exactly the thing that you advised against, which is just going to follow the basic trends, which is what, you know, the AI was trained on. But if you do use it as a tool to help with, you know, hey, help me refine this or help me draw insights from this and you have your own materials and processes there, that it can actually help accelerate the process some potentially. So, yeah, I think it's just a very interesting, you know, or I've taken it, you know, for example,

I've used it for saying, hey, I like to write, you know, longer articles and substacks and podcasts. I can feed that into an AI and it can break it into, you know, individual little posts or create an Instagram photo or image for me to go with that, right? So there's some tools there that can help. But I agree with you that I think that, heart of what you're doing has to come from both the values that you genuinely have, the real details about your products and customers and getting that feedback and,

and hitting the ground with actual humans to make sure you're on the right track. Okay. Well, so for those that like interacting with humans and are interested in interacting with you potentially, either to potentially bring you on for helping them actually execute some of these things or to learn more about some of these insights, is there any, way that people can reach you or see any contents you're creating or anything along those lines? Yeah, you can find me on LinkedIn, Amy Lowe on LinkedIn. You can reach out to Justin and Justin will put you in touch with me as well. So any of those will work.

Yes. No, this is great. Amy, I really appreciate you sharing all of these great insights. I know I learned a ton from you in our limited time of knowing each other. I'm so sure that our audience got a lot of value, a lot of actionable value. as well as a lot of demystifying of some of the things that can be kind of off-putting for those in the space. So thank you so much for bringing this, you know, genuine desire to teach and help and support and, you know, helping to, you know, do the exact things that are what connects us in the

first place. So thanks for coming on the podcast. Yeah, thanks so much for having you, Justin. Awesome. All right. We'll chat again soon. Okay. 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 platforms, such as iTunes, Stitcher, or whatever device you're listening on. Listener reviews and shares make a huge difference and help us grow this community and will allow me to bring more amazing guests and insights to you. I've taken the insights from these interviews, 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

designer. 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 soap.