Think Like A Game Designer - Brotherwise Games — From Sibling Bets to Publishing Success: Navigating Collaboration, Fostering Relationships with Influencers, and Championing Local Game Stores (#33)

Episode Date: November 19, 2021

Brotherwise Games, headquartered in Los Angeles, was established in 2012 by the dynamic duo, Chris and Johnny O’Neal. Over the years, the "Brothers Wise" have carved a niche for themselves, emerging as one of the most notable indie success stories in the tabletop gaming arena. In today's episode, we delve into the intricacies of collaborating with family, effective game marketing strategies, the art of partnering with influencers, and insights into what publishers seek in games. This episode promises a wealth of knowledge, and I'm so excited to bring it to you. Dive in and enjoy! 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. Today's episode, I speak with Chris and Johnny O'Neill. Chris and Johnny are the founders of Brotherwise games, and as you might have guessed, they are brothers. They really are some of the most.

most incredible people that I have had the fortune to work with during my time as a game designer. I actually started working with Johnny way back in the day about a decade ago on a trading card game called Reda Kai. And we now, a decade later, I've had the opportunity to work together on my latest game, Night of the Ninja, which is a awesome, quick social deduction game that appeals not just to people who like social deduction games, but also to people who don't. I myself love social deduction games in principle, but in principle. practice a lot of times, the fact that the games can go on for hours, the fact that once you're eliminated, you don't get to talk, that you need a moderator to manage it, that there's often a game

that can completely fall apart if the wrong people are on the defector side, are all things that can ruin the otherwise really cool game experience of trying to figure out what's going on with the other players and take clear actions to go ahead and try to deduce that and make things happen. And I try to solve all those problems with Night of the Ninja. And it's very fast to play. Each round takes like five minutes. You switch alliances every round. You can continue to talk and decide what's going on, even if you've been killed, because the goal is for you to make your team win, not necessarily for you yourself to survive.

And the action drafting where you can draft cards that let you either gather information or kill the other players or mix things up is really fun. So we talk a lot about it in the episode, but if you're at all interested, it is releasing right now. You can go buy it. You can just Google Night of the Ninja, find that your friendly local game store. Of course, the Brotherwise resources all have it there. So if it's the kind of thing that appeals to you at all, drafting and social reduction, something that's fast, it plays from four to 11 players, which is the largest range of play of any game I've ever worked on. And it also has a two-player variant. I know that sounds crazy, social reduction with a two-player variant, but it's actually a really fun, completely different way to use the same cards to play a kind of heads-up, very interesting, almost a princess bride, can't choose the wine in front of you kind of model.

you should really check it out. But enough about Night of the Ninja, even though that's the thing I was most excited about and was waiting to have this podcast for. And as you'll hear in the podcast, we actually waited for years. We actually had Night of Ninja completed before GenCon 2020.

And due to the pandemic, we decided it wasn't a good time to release a social deduction game. And we talk about the difficult decisions that had to be made when you're trying to delay a game or take a short-term financial hit in exchange for long-term gains.

But there were so many things, that I was excited to talk to Johnny and Chris about that we just had to wait for because we're waiting for this moment. Johnny has an enormous experience as a marketing director in the toy industry, and he brings a lot of that to bear here so you can learn a lot about how you create different looks for your game, how you make games stand out in a massive crowd, how you can do really interesting market research for your games and ways to cheaply decide and figure out who the market is that you want to serve, what things are most exciting to them. And towards that end, I'm actually going to take a lesson from this podcast and apply it right now.

So I've always worked under the assumption that most of the people listening to this are designers that are just trying to get into the industry, are just getting started. And I know there's some of you out there that are very experienced designers that even have your own company that listen to this podcast. And I've been working just under the assumption that, you know, there's about 20,000 of you out there. But I don't really know what you actually want and what you're actually most excited about. And so I'm going to take a note from this very podcast, and I'm going to create a survey at think like a game designer.com forward slash survey. That's think like a game designer.com forward slash survey.

If you could take just five minutes of your time and go to that website and I'll share this on social media as well to let me know what it is that you love about this podcast, what is it that you want to see more of, what's important to you. That will really help me because I want to make the thing that's most serving to you. Your guys are my audience. You guys are the people that are here. And so I want to be able to bring on the guests that you want to hear. I want to cover the topics you want to hear.

You want me to just talk about design and what it's like for new designers, or are you interested in more talks about publishing and marketing and all the other sides of the business? Or do you want to get into the real nitty-gritty of development and balance? And what kinds of things do you want to see? So if you can, just go ahead and check out Think Like Games.com. Forward slash Survey to check that out. And of course, there's tons more lessons in addition to this one that I'm now applying in this. how do you identify the number one challenge for your business and how might you address it?

How do you work with reviewers? And what are the tips that you have for figuring out which kinds of games to select and how you can work with them to get it promoted? What is the role of hobby stores versus mass market retail versus online retail? And all this stuff coming together in addition to what does it like to work with your brother and what does the design process look like there? So a lot of really exciting stuff. These guys are both great guys that have had amazing success. and I'm so excited to be working with them, and I'm excited to share all of this with you all now.

So without further ado, here are Johnny and Chris O'Neill. Hello and welcome. I am here with probably the most famous brothers in the world of gaming, the brothers from Brotherwise, Chris and Johnny O'Neill. Welcome, gentlemen. Thank you. Thanks for having us. This is exciting for me because this is the first time I've had two guests on the podcast,

and it couldn't be a more appropriate pair than the two of you. I have been wanting to have you on for a very long time, but we kind of intentionally sandbagged this a little bit until we had an awesome project together that we could talk about. And that project is now live with Night of the Ninja, the Ninja Fast Social Deduction game that is finally in stores, which is kind of crazy. And I want to get into that story,

especially talking about the development process for it and how we had it sit in a warehouse for a year plus. But there's a lot of fun and interesting things to go through on that. I mean, in retrospect, anyway. But I want to start at the beginning with you guys because, you know, I always like to, you know, most of our listeners are aspiring designers. And I know from my own background, like my brother and I would make games and play them and pretend all these experiences and create these things.

and the idea of being able to with your brother actually create games and make that your career is pretty amazing. How did this start off for you guys? Oh, man. Johnny, want me to take that one? So we had, you know, we're eight years apart, and that was a good age spread for us to sort of indulge in geeky habits together.

I was a pretty nerdy teenager, And so having a enthusiastic eight-year-old who was willing to play D&D with me and nerdy stuff with me was pretty awesome. And we stayed true to those that sort of shared love during the period of sort of adult separation when we both went off to different schools. And, you know, I was out of the house eight years before him. And then in around 2008, 2009, we were back in the same state. and in fact, just about 45 minutes away from each other, we started gaming together as one does, and we started critiquing games as one does.

And after noticing this pattern, we said, maybe we should try to make a game. And we actually set up a bet, the famous brother-wise bet where I have no memory of what the winner of the bet would get, but the idea was who could make the first playable prototype of a game. And I won the bet.

I made a game about, it was a memory game. Johnny had a military theme. Snipers, yeah. Snipers, yeah. So where you're sort of, it was sort of a play on

the classic memory game with a little bit more gamery. But Johnny didn't win the bet, but he ended up producing an early prototype of Boss Monster, which was our first game. And what year was this happened? Was this 2009 that that happened, Johnny?

I think this was around 2012. Okay. The bet happened. And an interesting thing is that, you know, around that time, I was giving to know Justin because we were working together on a trading card game called Redikai. That's right. was a really well-designed, really cool-looking lenticular card game that was eventually undone by extremely high price points

and not so great animation, entertainment that went with it. But that project was my first exposure to people like Justin and Brian Kibler, who made games for a living. And I had always dreamed of being in the video game industry, but just never did any kind of, software development or anything that would take me into that path. And suddenly saying, oh, one can be a designer of tabletop games was really inspiring. And while I was being the annoying marketing guy for Justin saying, hey, you know, can we add this?

Can we add that? He was kind of imparting game design wisdom along the way. And there are still, I remember comments that he made when I would ask him questions, or I should say Justin, comments you made when I would ask you questions, are still things that pop into my head today. Like a time you said, you know, it's easy to make a game more complicated, but how can you make a game more complex without making it more complicated? Little nuggets of wisdom like that made me think, wow, game design could be a real job.

That's a really cool potential career. Okay, great. So there's a lot of things I want to impact here, including my own wisdom, which sounds great. No, I think that, so one, I just want to, I want to talk. unpack about sort of this origin story, right? Having a competition of the first person who could create a playable prototype, I love that. And I actually encourage anybody out there that has, whether it's a sibling or a friend that are both interested in game design, have that competition because one of the principles of good design is you need to be able to get to

prototypes as quickly as possible because the ideas in your head, you never know if they're good or bad until you actually get them prototyped and tested, right? And the faster you can get to that stage and the faster you can iterate from there, the better your designs are going to be, and the more you're actually living the life of a game designer. So that extra pressure you created on each other by creating deadlines. One of the things I always say is deadlines are magic, and you created this competitive deadline was a really useful tool for you that I think other people can learn from. And then from there, I want to talk a little bit more about you, Johnny here, because, yes,

as you mentioned, we started, we first met, you know, working on Reda Chi, and I had been designing in games for a long time to that point. Redekye was a really interesting, different challenge. As you mentioned, the cards were not just lenticular, but they were the kind of see-through cards. And so we built the mechanics that they would stack on top of each other. And yes, it was a little too expensive, but some really cool stuff going on there.

But I was really impressed as, you know, you derogatorily refer to yourself as quote-up-the-marketing guy. You know, marketing gets a bad rap, and I don't want you to speak down to it. Because one of the reasons why I was so excited to work with you guys, in addition to being great, just great people, in general, is your incredible expertise in marketing. I think you guys do a phenomenal job with that.

And I think people, I'd kind of like to just talk a little bit about marketing in general. I think people have a very narrow view of what marketing means. And maybe, Johnny, you could speak a little bit to kind of a broader version of that and how you think about it before we'll get into kind of some of the nuts and bolts of how game design and marketing intertwined. Absolutely. There's no question that marketing can come across as a direction. word and even marketers I've known will sometimes be derogatory toward themselves like that. I do think good marketing is really all about tapping into community. Sometimes that might mean an existing community.

So with Boss Monster, when we were first trying to get the Kickstarter going, we reached out to people with nostalgia for retro video games. There was already an existing community that we were able to kind of build into. With our license games, we try to immerse ourselves in the fan community. for whatever it is that we're partnering on. If you're really good at, you can build your own community. So if you look at Apple or Harley Davidson or Jamie Stegmeyer, these are examples of creating this sense of affiliation,

this group of people who are into something, who all feel like, yeah, I want to be a part of this. Because people like to feel like a part of something. That's something that since I went full-time on Brotherwise a couple of years ago, we've really been working on building that sense of community through social media. But that's something we've been building in some ways all along from our first Kickstarter updates and some of the dialogue that happened with the Kickstarter fans there. Yeah, I love that.

Back when I was in business school, I looked at working in the video game industry and marketing. And what I didn't like was, as far as I could tell, video game or movie marketing were similar in that a product is created and then, kind of marketing guys come in and their job is to take whatever it is and sell it to people. And I saw the toy industry where I got the chance to do an internship at Mattel and realized, oh, well, in this industry, marketing and product development are totally intertwined. That was a lot more appealing to me because I felt like if I could make the right product, if I understand the consumer well enough, that's going to make the marketing job so much easier

and less of a convincing somebody that they want something and more, hey, this cool thing that you will love exists. And that felt more ethical. It felt like a cooler, less sellouty thing to do. And so that really drew me into the toy industry where I worked at Mattel and Spin Master and Moose toys. And I think the lessons from that have absolutely been crucial for how I've approached marketing for Brotherwise. Yeah, I love a lot of that. So let me let me piece some of that apart. So one of the things, you know, this, you know, finding your tribe and and being able,

marketing as a vision of like finding your tribe and being able to create things that they will love and be passionate about. And that can either be, okay, I'm building. I know that I know that these people are out there that love, whether it's nostalgic video games or the specific IP or, you know, this subcategory, you can go reach to those people. but also I think this is a more powerful long-term thing is building that tribe of people. And that comes from adding value to this community, to a community of people that you care about and you want to serve over time,

being consistent, having integrity. And then over time, people are going to continue to want to support you and not just say, hey, maybe I don't care about social deduction games, but I know Brother Wise makes good stuff. So I'm going to go and see what Night of the Ninja is all about, right? And I've had a lot of people similarly, like people that don't love, don't like social deduction games,

tend to love Night of Ninja a lot more because, you know, of the types of things we brought to the bear on it. And so there's this, this very virtuous cycle that comes out as you invest in your tribe. And you build that kind of relationship and you build that reputation over time. And so for new designers out there, right, that this is a process that, you know, takes years. It's a process that you spend your life doing. Now, you can kind of piggyback on tribes that already exist, but really starting to think about, okay, how do I add value to the community?

How do I find the people that I can really know deeply and then I can provide value to? And then over time, you build products and you build markets for that. And that's just such a healthier way of looking at the concept of marketing rather than, hey, here's this cool thing I built. How do I get you to buy it? Right. Absolutely. And I think when you get to know your community, you're then much more likely to make things that they're going to want.

and you're going to start thinking, you know, in the toy industry, we talked about marketing the voice of the consumer. And I thought that was a really important part of the job, staying on top of the consumer insights, you know, talking to people, hearing questions and comments and complaints. And in board games, it's very much about, all right, what are people reacting to? When I post something on Instagram, what gets people more excited? How do I need to course correct if the way I'm talking about this isn't the most exciting thing?

And the amount of long-term benefit you can get from that is the sort of thing that we need, because otherwise you're just making new games, throwing stuff against the wall, seeing what sticks, versus building on something that can lay a foundation and then lay that next level and keep going and keep going. How do you think about when it comes to refining that pitch and how you communicate your game and messages to people? because I think this is something else that you're really good at. And I think when I, you know, so I recently went to Gen Con and was pitching not just Night of the Ninja, which was easy to pitch. I was also pitching Soul Forge Fusion, which was actually very difficult to pitch because we have a lot of unique technology in the game. And we're trying to talk about what it is a hybrid deck game.

It's a whole new category and working with Richard Garfield. And it's, you know, uses elements from the digital Soul Forge game, but it's not digital. Right. And I realized that there was a maybe too much innovation. And so I over time was able to refine the pitch and get it better. But I realized from a product standpoint, I started from a difficult place. And it seems that you guys think about this earlier in the cycle that the pitch and the elevator pitch and the presentation is really baked in from very early on. Maybe one of you can speak a little bit to how that comes together or how you approach new projects like that.

Yeah, that's interesting. You know, we played Night of the Ninja with you and your crew. I don't know if you recall, we drove down and played the game. And in the car on the way back, Johnny and I talked about how we might make and market this game. And I think it's telling that we actually didn't talk a lot about the game. the game in that car ride because it's a great game. We didn't have a whole lot to offer to the mechanics. And we started to think about instead the experience.

And I think that's what good publishers do. They take games, good games from good designers, and they make good experiences with them. And with Ninja, we saw a great social deduction game that we really wanted to appeal to people who didn't necessarily love social deduction. That was part of your design was trying to fix a lot of the problematic pieces of classic social deduction games. And so we wanted also to find an art style that would reach out beyond that core audience.

And we wanted to find a messaging, not a tagline necessarily, but a message that would reach out to that core audience. So faster, quicker, no need for a judge. All of these things came across from the mechanics, but ended in the marketing in ways, which I think are really do make for a sleek core message that's easy to get. So building on that, Chris and Justin, one of the things we actually did was we made a list of everything that appealed to us about this game. And then we did actual research on that. So we did a very simple, you know, Google Forms survey that we posted on our own social media. And we, you know, I think we put a little bit of a boost behind it, you know, maybe $50, $60, $75 to make sure that it reached people who were not just brotherwise fans.

So we could go a little, you know, sort of start with our audience, but can go a little beyond that. And we got about a thousand respondents. and people in the board game industry, by the way, want to share their opinions. This is a highly interactive kind of fan. They're people who want to talk about these things. So it's easy. You don't have to bribe them with things.

I think we maybe had a little, you know, anybody who takes the survey has a chance to win $50 or something. But it was easy to get these. And we had a list of, we had, for Night of Ninja, it was theme for a social deduction game where you're a ninja. speed, how an average game takes just 15 or 20 minutes, easy to learn, that you can teach it in five minutes, player count that supports up to 11 players, everyone can play, so no moderator is required, the fact that it's team-based so that even if you die, you get points of your house

wins. You, the designer, the fact that comes from a well-known designer who isn't known for social deducting games, and price, the fact that it was going to be only $25. And seeing how people responded to those things was really helpful. That helped us emphasize things like the no moderator required message was actually really powerful for people. And that wasn't something I would have thought was kind of relevant to people otherwise. I didn't know that was going to be a message that people cared about. Even though the price is good, that wasn't something that people said that they cared about as much. The other thing we did is we asked what people. people's age ones and some other information along with this survey.

And this was in comparison to some other survey we've done. So we were able to see, okay, it's not a surprise to us, but social deduction fans tend to be a little more casual in their game preferences. They weren't also as interested in super hardcore games, and they tend to be younger. So all of those things give a sense of who to cast in the promotional video, who to target when we did targeted advertising. And it's a really simple step that any board game company owner can take.

Yeah, that's great. Because I think that's probably the first time that anybody's talked about that process on this podcast. So I think it's really worth unpacking. I don't think a lot of people would think to do that. So just a step by step recreate it. So you created a list of everything you thought of as the features for our game. And you use that list as a survey. And you had people just put on a scale of one to five, how important is this to you?

or how did you have them rank it? Yeah, it was a, with each of those, it was a one to five scale. And we also tested, we also asked people questions about Overboss and about called to adventure as part of this survey. And with research like this, it's good to have responses to multiple things. So you can just see, you know, what is, what is just, this is what the board game audience is, and what is specific to each game, you know, what's standing out about how people respond to things.

And there are, every time you look at this, you have to go in knowing these have built-in biases, but I think we've been able to understand what those biases are, understand that, yeah, Brother Wise fans are going to be most excited about things that continue a Brother Wise IP, and, you know, something newer is not going to slot as high, that kind of thing. But if you can do those things and, you know,

structure the survey to really surprise you and not just to confirm your own biases, then it's a really helpful tool. Great. Yeah, I think that's, I think it's another principle of the, what I call the core design loop where you're testing and iterating and taking in feedback. And the idea that you can test things as cheaply as possible, which in this case is testing your assumptions about what the selling points of the game are and what you should be pitching, be spending $50 or $100 to do a survey and get some people to

answer it is a very cheap way to be able to test your assumptions rather than going and, you know, having a complete game and hoping that it sells or trying to, trying to iterate later is more expensive, right? So I think there's definitely a lot of value there in the process. And so I think it's a great, a great, very specific tactic that people can use. I want to, I mean, we're already kind of digging deep into, into Night of the Ninja. I was planning to wait a little bit on that one. But since we're here, maybe we'll just kind of start going into that. Because one of the other things that I thought was really interesting,

and actually one of the things that convinced me that 100% you guys were the right ones to work with on this, was that I gave you the game with art that I thought was pretty good. And we had made that art. And I was originally going to publish the game myself. I wasn't sure if I wanted to. I kind of wanted to work with a partner. We had been looking for a project for a while. And it was, I think it was just a matter of days when you came back to me with the new art style that just blew me away.

And so maybe we can speak a little bit to that and how that came about. Yeah. So in that aforementioned car ride home, we were thinking about the art and we really liked the art that you had. And we talked about it a lot. It's to, you know, the style was a little bit comic booky, a little bit painterly. Very strong sort of motifs in it. And it was even color-coded a bit to the various ninja roles, which you can take throughout the game.

And we thought it was really, really impressive. But we were looking for something that would be a little bit different. We thought that, okay, Justin's sort of taken this very classic genre, really old gaming genre, and he's really breathed new life into. it. And we should try to do something equally novel with the art. And so Johnny, who as our art director, spends a lot of time just collecting looks. We'll talk about a game. He'll be like, well, what do you think about this look? And he'll show me this artist. He had been following papercraft art and shadow box art. And he showed me a few of these. And I thought,

holy cow, that's striking. We weren't sure how it would translate to photography on the cards. But eventually we ended up with this style that I think it was the first style we proposed to you of shadow boxes, where we had multi-layered images constructed from paper, backlit and then photographed. And the artist we worked with Ben Sharman was sort of a leader in this area and had been doing really innovative pop culture and nerd culture shadow box art for a little while. And one of the things we loved about it was this interplay between light and shadow, the idea of the ninjas, the fact that we could adjust the colors to sort of pass through the colors of sunset and evening and the night.

And we really found it transportive and transformative as the way you experience the cards on the table. And I think that comes back to that sense of publishers taking games and making them into an experience, you know, a thing that you experience with all of your senses, not just your sense of fun. And I think you reacted well to it and liked it. And so we dove right into that. Yeah, it was, it's amazing. For anyone that hasn't had a chance to see it, of course, you can Google the game. It's beautiful. The fact that every time I tell people, about the style of the art and how it was created they're amazed by it you also added in a lot of other really nice little touches the fact that the the honor tokens the points were ninja stars that

you pull out of a bag is super cool that you have little standy ninjas that you can give you not only serve as like turn reminders but you can knock over when you get killed you know those things weren't necessary for the game and they weren't they weren't a part of it when i handed it off but you guys really leveled it up in a way that was very impressive. It just makes a very fun, very pleasant experience. As you see the box on the shelf, as you open the box, as you're playing the game and very tactile. And those things, I think a lot of designers don't give enough thought to. Obviously, as publishers, it's a primary goal. But I think even as designers, it's important to think about what's the table presence for your game. What's the tactile experience of your game? How is it going to

represent on a shelf or in an image or in a video ad or a stream? You know, all all of things really matter a lot for being able to break through the noise of many games out there. I think that whenever possible, to sort of bring this, you know, back around to designers, the interplay between the designer and the publisher around this stuff is really key. And I, you know, as to your designers listening, I would encourage them to be as hands-on with the publishers as the publishers will tolerate. And the fact that we were able to work with you directly, show you art, get your feedback, sort of say, does this communicate what you were hoping to with this game? That makes it a better game. And what I worry about is when we have a designer who sort of hands a game off to us and says, good luck, I hope it looks cool.

That's actually not what I'm looking for. I'm looking for a designer who's willing to stay invested in that process and not just see this as a gift that they're handing me, but rather a, I don't know, a child to be nurtured through this process together. I like that. I like that analogy. Yeah. It's really interesting. And it's something for me, I think about a lot. I obviously, I have my own publishing company.

I publish plenty of games on my own. And part of why I made the choice to partner with you guys or have other partnerships. with some other people is it's people that I respect that I want to work with. My motto is, you know, work with awesome people, make awesome things, help each other grow. That's the company motto. I have everybody on the team repeated every week because it's really important. And if you're able to work, you know, finding people that you want to work with that are going to help make the projects better, make things more awesome, is the fun of it.

It's a small industry and you're going to be working with the same people over and over again, Johnny and I, when we first started working together on Reda Chi a decade ago, who knew that now here we would be having a podcast together with you guys having your own game company and us working together on this really cool project we're all passionate about? And so I always encourage people to find those other people that you really do want to work with and stay invested and be someone that's great to work with. Because one game is not a career, right? You want to be doing this for the long term. And the way that's going to work is by continuing to work with people, continuing to learn, continuing to be an awesome person to work with. that somebody who were like, wow, that person, not only did they create a game and hand it off, but they've over-delivered.

They've added so much value to the process. Of course, when they bring me another game, I'm going to take a look at it. And if I'm not going to publish it, I'm going to maybe connect you to somebody who would. Yeah, absolutely. And I think that's something where Chris is really good at. He is an expert at relationships, which sounds like a very broad thing to say. but he as the person who interfaces with designers who come to us with all of the different distributors and all the different people that the business touches is really good at making those people feel heard

at pulling out their best ideas and that's a big part of what's fun about working with Chris. So one thing I want to give, I'm going to just, I want to just share credit on this one. I don't mean to interrupt, but also, Johnny, the same thing is true for you. I absolutely was great to work with you on Redekye. I actually recently started talking to some people at Moose Toys about a different project, and they all had nothing but nice things to say about you as well as the team it's been. So you guys are both very, very representative of being great people to work with, and that is including regular follow-up, doing the things that you say,

showing gratitude, reaching out independently, following up, like all those key traits that anybody that wants to work, forget whether it's game design or anything else. Those are just key traits to be to be developing. And so it's it's it's a great to see from both of you. Well, it is a small industry and one where we, you know, connect really directly with fans. And I think authenticity is another really important part about marketing in this, in this industry. And one thing we've tried to convey to people through social media is, hey, we're nice guys.

we've tried to we've tried to recognize and shine a light on people who we think are cool we try to when we've seen for example influencers and content creators get criticized for various things we sometimes like to step in and say

hey we appreciate those people and we've done in fact a creator appreciation week for all the kind of content creators and influencers out there who are reviewing and making awesome videos and things for our games. And that is, that's another aspect kind of going back to the marketing set of things that is unique and it's different than marketing was when I first started this whole gig. And it's another element for any board game publisher out there.

If you want your game to get in front of people, building some relationships with people who are out there showing off these games is an important thing to do. How would people go about that? How do you find the right people to work with there? How do you make an impression on them? How should people think about initiating contact if it's budgeting for these things or trying to get them organically? What advice might you have for somebody that was looking to follow that path?

I think the first thing you have to do is spend a little bit of time to consume. this kind of content. So for me, I'm very much an articles and pictures kind of guy. I'm actually not a huge video watcher of almost anything. But, you know, I take time to watch YouTube videos of cool board game channels and board game personalities from, you know, watch it played to things get dicey to no rules barred. And then you just get a sense for what do those people like? What are they into so that you're sending them. the right game to play. Reaching out to people like that is pretty straightforward.

And usually you can just do it through direct messages and things, and they're used to hearing from publishers, and there's good ways to interact there. But really with the social media side of things, that is to take a step back, the first thing to do is search hashtags for competitive games, see who's talking about those games. So for something like Nighter the Ninja, I went to, you know, who's talking about coup and the resistance and werewolf and even mafia, classic social deduction games, and then reached up to those people to say, hey, we've got a new one and got those into people's hands of the people who would be kind of most likely to enjoy them.

Like Narly Carly, who's a big Instagram influencer who loves social deduction. So that, I think just taking that extra time of the research and a little bit of relationship building is key to that side of things. I hate to, I mean, I wish we didn't have to say this, but the thing I'll add to that is keep it classy. You know, when you're interacting with people who are influencers and have a extremely public presence, they can find themselves. getting treated as their identity on whatever that media is rather than who they are as a person. So keep it classy, interact with them professionally, not as someone to be commented on or sort of consumed just for their media. A lot of these people are convention attendees.

A lot of them are avid gamers who are part of the community and want to be known as players and as contributors to the community. Yeah, I think this ties back into earlier conversation about, you know, being a good person and that it's certainly doubly so when you're talking to people in the public eye where they get a lot of inbound, you being somebody that's, you know, respectful and good to work with, especially when you're approaching with an ask. Very often you want to start with, you know, establishing, hey, I really love your content, like trying to be nice at value as opposed to showing how the thing you're trying to pitch is

something that they would like, not just something you're trying to get attention for. Absolutely. I want to circle back a little bit because you kind of dropped this little comment earlier that Johnny as your art director is always collecting looks. And I think that might have flown over the heads of some people here because it's not a common phrase. And I think that you guys have such striking visual styles for all of your games. And you also maybe can tie into this, you know, when you're making,

decisions because you have both licensed games and unlicensed games. And when you're looking to collect, whether it's styles, art styles for your games, or licenses for your games, how do you approach that sort of thing? Is it, are they related? And, you know, how might people think about it if they were going to try to also have that same arresting visual styles or powerful IP for their games? So this is something we lucked into, I think. With our first game boss monster, we were designing that game. And it was Chris who said, hey, this game should have pixel art. And the amusing backstory there is that originally I was convinced that I should hand

draw all of the art in Boss Monster and that it should look like notebook pages from like Napoleon Dynamite's notebook, like just like awkward black and white drawings of things and, you know, the pixel art, which seems like that would have been a top down design choice. Like it seems like that was a game designed for pixel art actually came second. So that art style was something that at the time we could afford, but what it ended up being was something that was very distinctive. At the time, there was only one other pixel art game out there, and it wasn't a very big one,

and Boss Monster very quickly became the pixel art game. And there were a few kind of imitators or ones that have similar ideas at this similar time, but Boss Monster became the game that has pixel art. And we realized after that, okay, let's go for distinctive visual styles. When we looked at publishing unearth, it was originally a game about bees, and we said, yeah, this is really cool, but it just doesn't feel right for us. We went back to our hotel room and then realized, hey, what if it had this style? And we started pulling up Minecraft fan art and things like that, and we came up with an isometric vector art for that. And so then with Coldwood Mentor, it was, hmm, can you do something with concept art?

And that's now gone from being a case of serendipity to something that we actively look to do with every game is given an art style that will set it apart from other things out there. Because so many people are just trying to make a beautiful game. For a while, it was everybody was just trying to make a great-looking fantasy flight-esque game. and then the levels and production values kept going up and people are just trying to put the most beautiful art and everybody's trying to compete with magic and it's gorgeous $1,000 in illustration paintings and that is, it becomes really hard to differentiate yourself in that context.

So looking for an art style that might be a little left of center, an art style that is a little under-exploited, is we think really important. And honestly, it's how we start every single project is how we're going to make this look different from other stuff out there. I think one thing to say here is that when we're looking at games from external designers,

we're generally not worried about the art they're bringing to the table. And in fact, I will sometimes encourage designers to not worry about art at all because it runs the risk of me reacting to the art, which is generally, not going to be up to my standards because of the budget available to them. But what Johnny said about differentiating the game, that's what matters for a designer in my mind.

The thing to remember is you're one of many, many people designing, and the game needs to stand out in some way. And is it in the theme you present to me as the first possible theme? Is it the mechanics that you present to us as nobody's ever seen these mechanics? When you're thinking about your pitch and you're thinking about your sell sheet and you're thinking about why someone would want to help you make this game, having it stand out is going to be in my top three things that I'm worried about. And I suspect Johnny would agree the same. So that's, you know, art is not necessarily something you as a designer can always impact. you can through discussions with the publisher, or if you're self-publishing, or if you're an artist designer, which is like, those are awesome. But do spend as much time as possible thinking about

what would help it stand out so that that publisher can take that idea and run with it. Yeah, I think I just want to emphasize that because if you as a designer don't think this is your responsibility, you are dropping the ball. I always encourage my design. and the people that are in my course to think about your elevator pitch at the very beginning of your process, which is to say, if you've just got like a sentence or two or 30 seconds to convince someone to learn more about your game

and get excited about it, you need to know how you are going to do that. And if your game doesn't do that, then it's not going to get attention. That idea that the modern era of game design in many ways is a blessing because it's easier than ever to make games. The tools for creating and prototyping and publishing are way better.

than they were when I was first starting up. But the flip side of that is that means a lot more people are making games, a lot more games are getting published. And so the challenge is discovery and getting yourself outside, you know, breaking through the noise. And that having something unique in your gameplay, having something unique in your art style, having something unique in the story of your game and how people are going to get to it is absolutely critical if you want to have something that people are actually going

to find and want to play. So our mom is one of our key role models. she's a really successful businesswoman, was a management consultant in the 80s and 90s, and just her all-around awesome person. And she's somebody we go to often when we have business questions or need advice, and sometimes she just proactively ask us things. One thing she asked us was, what's the number one challenge to your business? And I think without hesitation, both of us said, there's just way too much competition.

There people are making too many games. There's too much out there. And how you stand out from that massive crowd of new releases is the number one problem we face this business. And, you know, she then asked us to think about, well, how do you solve that? How do you get around that? And, you know, differentiation of your offering is key. Communicating how that's differentiated through the marketing is key. You know, in our case, it's also about focus, not taking on too many games.

really picking a few that we think we can support well, and also continuing to support things. So I think too many people think that a game, you can sort of put it out there and hope it takes off, and if it doesn't, we move on to the next thing. We are big believers in continuing to promote something, continuing to get it out there. Originally, we had to do that because we only had a couple of games, but then we realized, hey, that is actually a good way of doing business. And so we are continuing to put support behind things, even if they came out a year ago, two years ago, three years ago,

in order to keep them going and keep them strong and build it to that next level of hopefully the next release. Yeah, and that A is one of the reasons I was also excited to work with you guys because if you have a game, you know, I was very passionate about Named Ninja. I wanted to see. I knew it was going to take some time and some traction to go forward with. And especially in our case, we sort of hinted at this at the beginning of the chat,

where we had Night of the Ninja ready to go for GenCon 2020. And then it was mid-pandemic and Jen Con got canceled. And we were going to release a party game, a social production party game in an area where we couldn't actually get people together. And that was a really. challenge. But a lot of publishers would have just said, whatever, we're going to release it and if it doesn't do well, then we'll

just move on to the next thing. And you guys didn't make that decision. Actually, you opened up the discussion with me, which I also really appreciated. But maybe talk through a little bit of the thought process of, you know, you're taking a hit there to sit on that product for a year

plus and make that decision there. Maybe you guys can speak to that a little bit. Yeah, that was painful. I think it was most painful because we felt like we were letting you down. But fortunately, I think you were on board with the thinking, which was if you're going to pour all this time and energy and passion into a project, you wouldn't hamstring it right out of the gate.

So we did. We sat on Night of the Ninja. It literally sat in a warehouse for over a year, waiting for pandemic conditions to improve because we were worried people wouldn't be getting together and playing in large groups. And I think it was the right decision. And I don't know that every independent publisher could afford to do this. I think that's also worth saying, which is sometimes publishers have to make decisions based on immediate financial expediency

that they wouldn't necessarily make if they had a little bit of a cushion, which we did, fortunately. And all I'll say is, I think it was really important that we made that decision with you. I think if you had said, no, guys, it's time.

Let's get this thing out the door. We probably, we wouldn't have necessarily been thrilled about it, but we probably would have done it because I think we have a lot of faith in your judgment in the gaming world, particularly, but also because that partnership was important. But I think it ended up being the right decision. It's been really well received now. I think people are eager to start getting together in bigger groups,

and I expect as the next couple of months conditions continue to improve, knock on wood, that it'll pay off even better. Johnny, any different take on that? I was just going to add that we at least only paid 20-20 shipping rates on that game in the 2021 shooting rate. That's so true.

So true. Oh, yeah. No, that's, I think it's worth echoing your comment, Chris, about, you know, publishers that can't make the long-term decisions because the short-term realities are, are a thing. And tying it into your point, Johnny,

I just, we just did a Kickstarter update for Ascented Tactics, where we let people know, you know, we're, we, when we plan that Kickstarter, we gave ourselves six months of cushion for when we thought we could deliver it to when we actually delivered it. Now here we are delivering three months late, and we're paying over $180,000 more for shipping than we collected than we expected to pay. And at the end of the day, it is very painful and a horrific gut punch. And, you know, thank God we're in a position where we can absorb that and we are going to.

but a lot of publishers cannot. And so part of the messaging we put out there is, hey, please be understanding with people because it is, especially now, it's just this sort of unprecedented kind of hit that the entire industry is taking. And so it's just important to spread that awareness. And, you know, I'm grateful when we can think long term. That's what we try to do. But a lot of times the financial realities of the moment really are pressing for a lot of people

in the industry right now. And a message to your designers, it's sort of a two-part message here. One would be work with your publishers on contracts and rates that you both feel comfortable with. And two, recognize that publishers really are taking on a fair bit of risk when they go in to produce your game. and for a large part of the last decade, that risk has been relatively cushy and is paid off. But it's the publisher's job to absorb that risk when it does get ugly as it has now.

And both parties need to be mindful of that. But yeah, I read that Ascension update, and man, I was just aching for you in terms of that hit and knowing that we're also looking at that on our most recent shipments. It is a tough time. where MSRPs have not caught up to the new reality, and publishers are feeling the squeeze.

Yeah. Yeah. So I'm hoping that those things will work out over the next year or two, but it's going to take at least that. And this might be a new normal. Nobody can really predict right now. So it's an interesting time. And it's one of the reasons why we decided to print SoulForge Fusion

here in the U.S. and only shipped to the U.S. as our Kickstarter because the risks were too great to try to do a full international release and predict what was going to happen. So we're going to do a more traditional international release slowly over time over the next year. Yep. So let's talk a little bit about the design process here with the two of you guys,

because very often working with design teams is one thing. And the skills to be able to communicate well and bounce ideas back and forth is something that we could have an entire podcast on. and the idea of doing it with my brother, we work together on some things. In fact, he helps edit this podcast and we work together on a couple of things. But the idea of having that back and forth

with my brother, I think, could get challenging sometimes. So you guys seem like you have a great working relationship and division of labor. How does that work with the two of you? Including who speaks first. Johnny, why don't you start on this one? all right well there you go there you have it so i think uh chris is often willing to kind of let me speak first on things because he knows i'm always highly opinionated and raring to go and uh just dive into things uh when it comes

to working together i think it ties into something that you say in think like a game designer justin which is that ideas are 10% execution is 90%. And that idea that sort of ideas are cheap, I think that's very true. And I am very much somebody who is constantly generating ideas and I'm throwing out things and you know, you generate a lot of good ideas to get to good ideas. But then Chris is really great at selecting the right ideas,

identifying the good ideas and nurturing those. and asking the questions to get at the best ideas. So I think that's why when we divide up labor, he does more of the work on the publishing side of working with the other designers who come to us. And I tend to do less of that and more of some of the initial design and laying the groundwork for things. So that's kind of a skill difference.

In terms of personality-wise, working together, I think part of it is just Chris is an extremely patient person. He's not somebody who gets angry and yells and raises his voice. You know, when he first suggested boss monster should have pixel art, I immediately was like, no, bad idea. And then I remember like walking my dog and, you know, being on that walk and suddenly going, oh, wait, okay, maybe Chris has a good idea here. And that has now happened enough times that I no longer have the reflexive response of,

nope, you're wrong. I'm right. But even so, you know, I think I'm more likely to try to steamroll an idea over him. And he's more the person who's kind of patient and says, well, think about it another way. And that, you know, I think he's an easy person to work with. And that's a big part of what makes this a good partnership. I think, and this is, you know, this is my, my big word of wisdom for the day is learn how to work with passionate people. Passion is the number one predictor of someone's success in my mind, but only if that passion can be harnessed. And Johnny has an immense amount of passion for creativity, for the act of creation,

for an idea that he falls in love with. And if I go in and stomp on that passion and say, you know, dude, that art is a horrible idea that's going to bomb, that gets us nowhere. But if I sort of say, why is he saying this? What is he passionate about? Why is this designer coming to me and getting so frustrated when I start to question their design?

That's where we can start to make progress. And I think, you know, as designers, the first thing you need to succeed in this industry is passion. But the second thing you need is recognition that passion can sometimes take you down the wrong path. And I think that's one of the main reasons we work together. We have a huge passion source in Johnny's creativity and energy and generation of new ideas. And we have a good filter for that passion in my sense of what's feasible, what will sell, what makes for a good experience.

And that, I think, is probably the main secret to our success. That and, you know, our parents raised us right. Like, we're not allowed to beat on each other. It's got to be worked out one way or the other. I will also say, you know, we have said very clearly from the beginning of all this, you know, our relationship comes first. We're never going to let this business come between us. if we reach a point where we're feeling pissy at each other and in a big way in a,

oh, you know, this is no longer making a smile, then we stop it and we go get, you know, day jobs again. Because I think part of what makes us through those moments of passion and disagreement is knowing that having that confidence in the relationship with each other and knowing, you know, no matter what Chris says about an idea I put in front of them, He's my good brother. He loves me. And I don't get, you know, that's going to limit how much I get bent out of shape about anything.

Right. So there's a few, a few key things. I don't want to interrupt because I want, this is great. But like the principles of, you know, being passionate, being willing to listen, being willing to let, you know, not take your ideas too seriously and being willing to kind of have them smash against that wall of reality, think are all key. And I'd also like you to maybe talk a little bit. bit more, Chris, about what makes you so good at this filter process? Because we already talked about

one of the key filters, which is what's going to make a game stand out, right? What's going to make it unique and grab attention? But are there other things that make you so good at this process because that I find is a pretty rare skill? Oh, man. I don't know necessarily, except that I think I'm very good at getting multiple people to work together on something. And that's, that's, That's sort of how I'm, I think I oftentimes arrive at these things. It's not me being some guru who knows the right answer. It's me being able to solicit a lot of different ideas from different people, reactions from different people, figuring out who's good at what, where their strengths are,

and sort of tie all that together. But it's a relatively useless skill if you don't have the source material, if you don't have the ideas coming into you. And Johnny's really, really good at generating that stuff and getting it to me. And I would encourage any designer out there, don't do this in a vacuum. Find people that are design with. Find a design collective. Find a class to take like Justin's class.

Find a way to get reactions in real time because playtesting's key, playtesting where the magic is. but if playtesting is sporadic and punctuated and you're having long periods of design in between where you're operating solo and not getting that real-time feedback, then you're missing out on a lot of pace. You're missing out on a lot of speed of design and whittling out bad ideas earlier, building on good ideas sooner.

Yeah, finding a great community and people that you can work with and that you can have this kind of dialogue where you can bounce ideas out there where you're not afraid to put out ideas and that you can hear the feedback in a way that's not going to damage your ego and vice versa and give that feedback. I think it's just there's no substitute for that. That's one of the things that, well, I built the thing like games on, of course so that we could have a group of people that we're all that can, you know, for those that don't have it naturally

or don't have it nearby and they can all share ideas and test things and you can get much higher level feedback. You can have much rougher prototypes, right, and get feedback. a lot of times I always advise people to make a simple stupid prototype as quickly as possible. But the problem is if you're just testing in front of regular people, they often can't see past the ugliness of the prototype to the heart of what's going on. And a more sophisticated audience can do that much faster. I actually wonder if the culture of having one name on a box misleads some designers into thinking

it's a truly like solo, autoer kind of situation. because to some extent it is. To some extent, this is something you can really focus on and have one person be a creative lead, but I know you work with a team. We work as a duo. It was Jason and Matt who did On Earth and Aaron and Kevin who did Overboss.

So every game we've published has come from at least two or three people working pretty closely with each other. And I think a lot of our clients, Playtesting that's important happens before we even give it to a larger audience. It's just playtesting with each other. And if I was designing totally solo, I don't know what I would do. I'd probably grab my best friend who is really into game design and try to be constantly playtesting with him because trying to do it solo seems like it would be really, really challenging.

And that's not even to speak to the development side of things. Once a publisher has a game, we have this fellow Hayden, who works for us now in development. And Hayden is just magnificent at taking these designs we thought were done and showing us, no, they're not. In fact, much larger scale playtesting and much larger scale picking things apart drastically improves these games. So we could talk and it could be a whole other hour on the handoff from design to development. and what that can do for a game that's that just capitalizes on all of that we've been talking about yeah yeah i think that that that that that that handoff in development process is this whole whole other huge huge skill set that uh i agree is it's it's worth diving into um i think another topic i

was interested to cover is is where you guys are on the idea of game stores and retailers i think I think that there's, it's been in many ways the heart of the industry for many, many years. It's the place where people get together, where they discover games. But the industry got pretty rocked during COVID, and most of these stores got shut down. A lot more of the sales are now online or direct or through things like Kickstarter and discovery is happening through streams and reviewers and a lot of other areas. I know you guys just launched a new retailer program pretty recently. or announced it at least. And I'd love to hear what you guys think about the retailers in the modern era

and how publishers and designers should be thinking about them interacting with them. That's a great question. Johnny, why did we start the retailer program for Brotherwise? We started the retail program for Brotherwise because we really like friendly local game stores. We think there's a lot of them. It is where we do the majority of our business, even though we do a lot of sales through one of our distributors who sells to Amazon, through the same distributor who sells to Barnes & Noble. The game stores are still really, really important to us. And the sense of community that they foster in any location, the idea that somebody can go in there and get recommendations,

I do think some of the online stuff that you just mentioned, Justin, is a potential substitute for that. Maybe influence or recommendations have started to take over some of what store employee recommendations once were. But we don't think game retailers are going anywhere, and we want to support them, especially during a time frame where they know they put it on shelves and that, online, totally e-commerce-focused places are going to have that game at like 20 or 25% off at the same time. So our program is just about giving retailers advance selling windows so they can sell ahead of those online resellers,

giving them free promo cards and free stuff that make their lives a little bit easier. So that is, you know, that's our thinking there. So we're going to, at the same time, continue to use Kickstarter. That's an amazing tool. That is something that we don't use for all our games. We don't need for all our games. But we have three Kickstarter planned over the next 20 months.

So it's something we're going to be doing. But we think those two things can go hand in hand. And for us right now, at least, it's about how do we make it work everywhere rather than shifting from one model to another. Yeah, I think I think that's it's a good point in that it's not it's not it's not it's not it's not it's not it's all it's yes and right that these these new channels are there that we can push for and yet there's still a place for retailers. There's still a place for where people can gather and I you know I push on this because I think we all have this baseline

assumption right we grew up at the local game store. That's where I got my love of games and would go to play magic or go to play whatever new, discover the new games I wanted to play. And so I have this nostalgia or distinct desire to see it work and survive. And I also just try, I want to question that because my bias is towards that support. I mean I need to be particularly vigorous of pushing against it. And what I've learned from my side is that when those stores are really invested and build, those local communities, that becomes something that spreads and sustains. And so maybe it's not as much about being in as many of those stores as you can,

but really finding the ones that are going to really invest in teaching, invest in the community because at the end of the day, it's the community that gets people to keep playing and loving the games. No matter how good the game is, if there's not a community around for you to play with, well, that game's just going to sit on the shelf and not really it'd be worth buying. Yeah, I think, you know, this, a lot of, has been made of this discussion is, you know, sort of the age of the game store over. And I do think that it's a little bit specious. I mean, gaming is an ecosystem,

and game stores fill a niche in that ecosystem. Other things are starting to fill that niche. You know, online communities are bigger. Gaming itself has gotten more legitimate, and so more people are available to befriend and play. But game stores do provide things to the ecosystem, that are harder to find elsewhere, if only this sort of sense of community presence and sort of what you might call shelf presence. And I hope that publishers continue to invest in them. I do think they provide something special. And I do think that my frustration at online, the proliferation of sort of markdown-based online

gaming stores isn't just sort of a sense of personal effrontery. It is a sense that there's something lost when we don't have tables by shelves with games on them. And I hope we don't lose that. Yeah. And maybe that's because we've talked a lot about the online piece of it and kickstaters and reviewers and that compared to the local game stores. But you also mentioned that you have distributors that put your stuff into Barnes

and Noble and you move products and low. look to get it into mass market. And Johnny, you have a ton of experience with this from the toy world. How do you think about that path of games moving from the local stores to the Barnes & Nobles of the world to the targets and Walmart's of the world? Our feeling on mass market is, you know, with Boss Monster, it was, oh, gosh, can we get this to the mass market? Yes, let's do that.

And Boss Monster was for years at Target. and I was really excited. I remember when we got to Hot Topic and Think Geek early on, that was me coming from a mass market toy industry perspective and wanting to be there. The challenge with mass market is, as publisher, you're a lot more on the hook for markdowns and things if things don't work. And there's also a big question of, is this actually the right consumer? is the mass market person who's there, somebody who wants your hobby game. So part of our relationship with mass market comes down to what for otherwise is about as a company.

So our trademark tagline is games that bring everyone to the table, which is about how we want to bridge the gap between core and casual. Boss Monster was something of a gateway game for a lot of people. it brought people into the hobby and there are so many people fighting over the limited number of people who are already in the hobby that we want to try to make sure

that with every game we do we have the potential to bring people into the hobby for the first time. Night of Ninja is a great example of a game that does that. Overboss from a gameplay perspective is extremely accessible can be played with kids

while still being really enjoyable for adults. Call to Adventure is a game that has brought a lot of D&D fans into board gaming, sort of non-rollplay tabletop gaming as a hobby. So that is something we're looking at, and a place like Barnes & Noble lines up really well with that. I think Barnes and Noble has taken literally everything we've published in the past. And Target and Walmart aren't necessarily a great place for those, but we keep a close eye on those and look for what is the game that is a good fit for those truly mass market experience.

Yeah, that discovery and widening the net of people that you can approach and bringing, making the hobby bigger and is a great way to think about a lot of those other platforms. So I wanted to, you guys have started relatively recently in the scope of things for how successful you've been as a publisher and and as designers where what would you advise for people that are starting out today who haven't you know whether they wanted to start their own publishing company as you guys did or just you know design and be able to pitch to somebody like you guys how would you how would you how would you what advice would you have for for somebody just starting out well you know as you alluded to earlier there's there's never been an easier time to get a game published we

got started on Kickstarter. A number of our peers got started on Kickstarter or other crowdfunding sites. And there are some really good reasons to do that. You know, control, higher profit percentage, developing a future player base. These are all really good reasons to do it. But, you know, I try to point out the folks,

there is many good reasons not to try to become a publisher and to go with an established publisher. Not least of which is there's two damn many of us. There's so many publishers right now and so many games out that, you know, one of the challenges to these resale stores we've been talking about is knowing what games to push, what will be good, what isn't. There's, you know, there's a glut of product. So finding an established publisher and getting your game placed with an established publisher

is going to go a long way towards getting you past that first hump of being seen. Kickstarter's great PR, but a publisher will have distributor relationships. They'll have retail store relationships. They'll have a player base. They can push that game better than a new person on the scene can. And if you're going to be a designer and if you're going to find a publisher, you should be doing your homework and finding out which publishers publish this type of game. The number one reason that I reject games,

and I reject probably a game design every other day or every three days or so. The number one reason is it's not for us. I see very few games that I think, you know, that's a bad game. Most submitted games I play, and I'm sort of ahead of publishing here, so that's one of the reasons I see them first, is that they're just not for us.

You know, the brother-wise audience is a certain type of player. They expect certain types of games from us, and we find ourselves thinking about that audience a lot. So if you send me a giant miniatures-based 4X space battler, I'm probably going to send it back to you and say, have you played any of our games? Because this isn't what we do. And there's plenty of publishers out there who do do that.

But your number one job is the designer outside of design every day is play every day. Play games, make a note, keep a journal, keep a journal of what companies play what, keep a journal of how much you like games from certain companies. The more you like them, those are the guys you should be, and gals you should be submitting to. That would be my big note on that. Johnny? Yeah.

That's great. Before you, I'm happy to get Johnny's in a bit too. I just want to say that idea of, you know, learn the publishers that are out there, approach to publishers whose games you love that are connected to the games you're making and tying into the earlier point about building those relationships over time. The first game you pitch probably is not going to get picked up. Most of the time you're going to get rejected. But if you work with a publisher and you hear their feedback and you react to that feedback

and then you come back to them in a way that shows that you listen, they're going to be very inclined to continue to listen to you or listen to your next game pitch. And so thinking about this in the long term, researching those publishers, showing how your game is going to fit in their portfolio and being someone that's good to work with are just absolute critical skills. So that's great, great points. Yeah. And if you do decide to self-publish, I'd say my number one piece of advice is just understand the cost structure. And this is one where, tying back to the old Redikai thing, I'd say the biggest misstep that was made with Redikai was that product was structure around

mass market toy price points where the retailer is taking somewhere in the range of 25 to 35% margin, whereas the entire trading card game and board game industry are based around 50% margin, or what's called 100% markup, where the retailer can expect to pay $20 for something and sell it for 40. So if you are going to self-publish, I think too many people have been able to make the Kickstarter math work, but then not realize that they need the math to work when they're selling it to a distributor who then has to sell it to a store, who then has to double what they're paying for it. And that's a case where because we had some experience going into this, we were able to structure our margins for Boss Monster appropriately and get in on the ground floor doing things right.

But I've seen a lot of small, would-be publishers falter during that transition from a successful Kickstarter to trying to actually make it work at retail. And I think that's the other reason why retail is maybe so important to us is because we feel like we get it. We know how to make it work. We know how to be very retailer-friendly and retailer-focused. And maybe too often they're seeing more as an afterthought. Yeah, yeah, to that point, you generally want to be, at least the rule of thumb we use is you want your retail price to be five times your cost, your landed cost for a product to be able to account for all those markups as they go through the process. And that can vary depending. But when you're when you're trying to say, okay, I'm going to sell it to a distributor at 60% off,

it's going to sell it to a retailer at 50% off and they can get that full retail point. you've got to have a lot of room there to make that work for you as a publisher. And people don't realize that a lot. Maybe even more than that, given the changes in the past seven to eight months. Yeah, that's right. Even now, it's more costly and more risk on the publisher side. So it's even more difficult. So, yeah, I generally advise people when they're first getting started, you know, first pitch your game to a publisher,

show that you can make a game that's good, learn the process by working with somebody that's established, establish your own name and space in the market by getting a game out. And then you will have a much easier time if you do want to self-publish or launch your own company or whatever. Some people want to go down that whole path, but it requires a whole set of skills that are not related to game decides that you need to figure out if you're going to actually be a publisher. You end up spending a lot less time working on games, as I've learned the hard way,

when you're really trying to do the entire thing yourself. Totally. All right. So, you know, we're getting close to the end of time here. I always want to make sure, you know, we obviously, we've talked a little bit about some of the projects, including the awesome Night of the Ninja that we have created together. I want to give you guys some space to talk about how people can find you, cool products. You want to push all of the things like that. I'm also happy to, you know, dive deeper into any of the things you guys want. But I want to just sort of say, if people really love these two brothers from Brotherwise, how can they learn more? and support you guys. I want to know what the next exciting project from Justin Gary and Brotherwise is going to be. What's the next game you're bringing us, Justin? That's what I want to know. Well, I'm excited to share some new game I do with you,

although I don't know if it's time to share them publicly on this podcast. All right. I was waiting for Night of the Ninja to actually release. I can wait a long time. So, you know, we can start conversations on the next project. I'd be happy to do it. Well, you can find us on the web at www.w.w.com. We are also active on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter.

Gosh, any other social media, Johnny, I'm missing? Those are really the ones that we've focused on. You haven't started your TikTok channel yet? You know, we've toyed with TikTok. We're going to come up with a boss monster dance. TikTok and Twitch are both very, very challenging. You know, I find YouTube, Instagram,

Facebook, those are the one, Twitter, those are the ones that I spend the most time on. One important thing to point out, I think, for your designers listening to this, is that like a number of publishers, we have an open rolling design review.

So if you go to our website, somewhere on the contact us side of things on that webpage, you'll find a link to a online tool for submitting your design to us. And we ask that all designs go to that tool for legal reasons, but we encourage you to apply away. So we're eager to see what's out there. And it certainly wouldn't hurt for you to mention that you're part of Justin's class when you're doing that.

So please do reach out. We want to see what you've got out there. You know, there are a lot of games on the market right now, but I always think there's room for one more. Absolutely. There's always room for more great games. That's for sure. That's right.

And what we've got coming up, this is a big month for us because we have Night of the Ninja, which I really do believe is going to be the next hit social deduction game. The number of people who have called it the best social deduction game that would play is really encouraging. And what's cool is that we've heard that from people who normally love the genre and normally don't love the genre. So that's all

really promising. We're also releasing the Dragon Prince Battle Charge, which is the first board game based on the hit Netflix series. It's a game I'm really proud of, very streamlined, miniatures based, card-based comment. And we are next month going to be kick-starting the next call to adventure

called Epic Origins, which really is a standalone game, and very much is inspired by character creation in table top RPGs like D&D and for the first time we'll let you be a door for an elf or a ranger or a cleric some of that very D&D inspired source material that was on the periphery of the original cultural literature but is front and center and epic origins so that is we think going to be a big one for us very cool very cool yeah and for the for those that want to participate in the

think like a games under masterclass we're actually just finishing up our current session here and people will be pitching to you guys, amongst other publishers. You can find that as well as more podcast episodes and goodies at thinklikegamesigner.com. So you guys, this is so much fun. It was a long way to get to the point where we could have this podcast. It was worth the wait. So many great gems.

I always love chatting with you guys. And I believe that our next talk is going to be about the next project we all want to work on together. So I'm particularly excited for that. Awesome, man. Thank you guys for joining us. Thanks for having us on. Thank you so much for listening. I hope you enjoyed today's podcast.

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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 are sold.