Think Like A Game Designer - Eric Price — Uniting VTubers and Players, Designing Oshi Push and the Importance of GAMA (#66)

Episode Date: May 15, 2024

About Eric PriceEric Price, a veteran in the tabletop gaming industry, joins us to discuss his extensive journey from localizing Japanese games to spearheading innovative projects. As the president of Japanime Games and GAMMA, the Game Manufacturers Association, Eric transforms how games are experienced globally. Under his leadership, both organizations have flourished, fostering strong relationships with publishers, retailers, manufacturers, and designers. In our discussion, Eric unveils his latest venture, Oshie Push, a trading card game featuring VTuber characters, set to launch simultaneously with this podcast episode podcast. Tune in to gain insights from a visionary who is reshaping the landscape of tabletop gaming. 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 Eric Price. Eric is the president of Japaname Games and the president of Gamma, the Game Manufacturers Association. In this episode, we talk about a lot of fascinating subjects. I've known Eric for years and he's a great person and has a lot of great insights. We talk about the process of sourcing and localizing games from Japan and what appeals in different regions. We talk about the importance of the Gamma Association and how it can help you

as someone who wants to be involved in the tabletop industry, whether it be as a publisher, retailer, manufacturer, or designer. And we talk about an exciting new project called Oshie Push. Oshy Push is launching as the same launching of this podcast, so May 15th on Kickstarter, and it is a TCG using characters called V-tubers. Now, if you don't know what V-tubers are, stay tuned to find out, because here's the secret. I didn't know what V-tubers were when I started, and I actually designed this game for Eric. So he introduced me to this whole new world, and I had a lot of fun designing this project. You know, most of the games I make for Stoneblade, and we launched them ourselves.

This was something that was very unique to Japan-A-May, and we made a very unique game for it. So in the podcast, I'll talk more about it. But if you're intrigued about this partnership and intrigued about this thing, you can go to Kickstarter right now, search for Oshy Push, and you'll be able to play the game. But if you want to learn more, stay tuned for my conversation with Eric Price.

Hello and welcome. I am here with Eric Price. Eric, man, it's great to have you on the podcast, finally. Yeah, thanks, Justin. It's great to be here. Yeah, so I am excited to dig into our, what has been a super secret project for a while and has now not a super secret and is exciting. But I want to start like I do with all the guests is with origin stories because you've been, you know, a feature, a luminary in the industry now for some time. But I actually don't know how you guys started.

We've spent a lot of time together. I don't know how you got into this in the first place. So maybe you could share what got you into the game industry and kind of kind of brief version of what got you to where you. are. Yeah, I mean, it's interesting. I mean, I started out in Seattle. I had a comic book store in the early 90s. And then when magic came out, I had this guy come into my store with a binder full of magic cards. And he's like, hey, you should check this out. And he left his binder with me and told me to sell his cards. And over that weekend, I sold about $20,000 with the cards out of his binder. And I'm like, oh, my God, I got to check this out. So then I started getting into it. And this

was, let's see, it was unlimited at that point. Beta had just gone out. And we got in antiquities, bunches of antiquities. And of course, I did have a little bit of Arabians and then, of course, legends hit. So I was carrying these magic cards and it was obviously, as everybody knows, became a huge hit. And then over the course of the next few years, I started selling cards online. and I started traveling all over the world selling cards. I played in one pro tour. When I got there, it was a magic pro tour Atlanta, the Mirage Pro Tour. I got there.

I played two rounds, lost, dropped out, and started selling cards. And then I was just going around, buying and selling cards, and realized I could really do very well with this. So I started going to all the Pro Tour events and a lot of Grand Prix events later on. And eventually, Magic came out in Japan. I was selling tons of cards to Japan. So I started traveling to Japan. That was kind of the roots of eventually what turned into Japan and May games, because I forged all these relationships in Japan over the years.

Yeah, it's fascinating. And so what I love is like, you know, you came at this kind of from, you know, the business side. Were you a gamer much before that at all? or like, you know, what, was there any, it was just like, oh my God, there's so, this is so much more collectible and profitable than comic books like, I'm in. It was, at that point, no, I was not a gamer.

Magic is what got me into games. I've always been into collectibles. And as a kid, I collected baseball cards, and I didn't care about baseball at all. I just love collecting. Yeah, yeah. Yes, let's dig into that a little bit because that's actually really interesting.

Because, like, I'm the same way, right? I collect the baseball cards. I collected, I collected comic books. I collected like all kinds of little things that like, even coins for a little while. Like who could, who cares about coins? I mean,

not to offend any coin collectors in the audience. I just, I did not care about it. Most of that comic books were cool because at least I could read them. And then games I could actually do something with it. But like there's something about that like collectability drive. What do you think that is? It's like so compelling about just like collecting stuff and having that brought in.

I love the idea of buying something and having it increase in value. That was the thing that drove me. I mean, I love collecting things, but I just loved being able to make money off of collecting, buying the right things. And it was kind of like as a kid, almost like collecting stocks. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay, yeah. So this intrinsic drive kind of hooked you in. You found a thing that was super collectible.

You got into that space. You started playing. I mean, you made it to a pro tour at least, so you played some, you know. And so then I've played games with you. I know you play games now. So I then when, but Japaname wasn't, didn't, didn't do collectible games prior to now, right? So it was, it was, walk me through this transition then from, you know, kind of magic selling, buying arbitrage to now, now what does Japaname do and why, why, why did this transition happen? Well, before Japan Amay existed, I started doing distribution, international distribution of games.

That was my company, Global Games Distribution, mainly selling into Asian countries, Korea, Japan, China, because there was a lot of interest in getting games that I had access to here in America, like Magic, for instance. And then I started up a Euro company bringing in European board games called Coffee House Games. My retail company was cardhouse games. And we did very, very well with that. We were one of the only companies at the beginning selling cards online from the trading card games. Eventually, we started Japaname games, and that's true. They were not collectible games.

And at that time, collectible games were not the most exciting thing. People wanted non-collectable games at that time. That's what we were focusing on then. but we dabbled with a few things here and there, but it was mostly board games, deck building card games, things of that nature. Yeah,

so I'm interested a little bit in this because this process of just like importing games and distributing games. Like there's a lot of logistical overhead and a lot of like headaches that come with that having done it myself to some degree. And generally I try to outsource and find partners for that sort of stuff as much. Like what goes into being good at that? It's like, what do you attribute to, okay, this is how this works well? This is why I was able to do this well.

Well, the distribution side of things, I found a need. And that's what a lot of business is all the time, obviously, finding a need and filling that need. There were the companies that I met in Japan when I was doing these trips to Japan early on. And they wanted magic cards, was really the thing at the beginning. So we were buying thousands of boxes of magic. We were shipping it all over the world, and then it turned into board gaming taking off. And so we were bringing in board games, card games, and all these different things.

And the first thing that we did outside of trading card games was actually Mage Knight, because it was collectible. And it was a board game. It was a miniatures game. But people really wanted that as well. So we got into that, and that was kind of the first segue into other types of games. Yeah, yeah, it's fascinating. I just, you know, kind of going where the need is, going where you see demand, you know, being able to fill that in and, and being able to pivot and move into these different spaces going from comics to TCGs, going from TCGs to collectible mini's going from that to more standardized box games, just seeing kind of where the market's taking you.

And is it just like you're getting these from, you're just talking to people and you're seeing the enthusiasm, people are asking you for things. You kind of have a read on the environment. You have some kind of like, you know, you're just kind of an instinct for where the market. it's going or is it just, okay, 100 people ask me for this, therefore I'm going to do this. It starts out as a few people, a few people asking me for a product. And of course, we're dealing in large volume. We were bringing in quite a few games. And so then eventually we're also started publishing the games and translating them. I was bringing games into Japan where we were getting the licensing rights for them. So we're doing large print runs and selling large quantities.

And so again, this is a big shift. I don't want to undersell like, you know, I mean, you're a, you're a logistical powerhouse, right? I mean, I know this from conversations that we've had over the years, but it's like to go from, I'm going to just take things and buy them and sell them for more than I bought them for. That's one thing to another like, hey, I'm going to start manufacturing and, you know, handle the logistics of warehousing and international shipping and, you know, stock levels. And now I know Japaname has, actually, I don't know how many skews you have. It's more than I can. What do you, do you know off the top of your head how many different product skews that you have? We have a lot of games, a lot of expansions, and a lot of accessories.

We sell the games, and then we sell play mats, card sleeves, all of those. So several hundred. Yeah, so several hundred, which is like, to me, I've got like, I don't know, like less than 10. And it's already, like, a lot. Yeah, more I guess we count like the sleeves and the things, but still, like less than 20. And I think, so what, again, what, what's the key to being good at that? Or what's lessons you've learned or maybe some, a fun story of, uh, of, uh, of, of challenge or victory that you'd want to share

at how to be good at it. Because a lot of people out there that dream of international empires of game publishing don't realize what goes into this. Well, it was a lot of trying different things and seeing what sticks. Like I said, the coffee house games was the Euro games and I was importing those.

Same time Z-Man, Zev, was importing a bunch of games from Germany and working on that, I was not finding a huge success with those Euro games. We sell some. We do okay with it, but Japaname games took off. We saw a real niche, real need in that side. And also, I started going to anime conventions. I did not go to anime conventions 20 years ago, but it was about, well, actually, because

it was about 20 years ago that I started with my retail side of my company. But then when we published our first anime-related. game that was Tonto Quarry, a game about maids, which I thought was the weirdest idea. So this company, Arklight, based in Japan, that I had been doing business with for probably 10 years, came up with this game and they asked me, hey, why don't you try selling this in the U.S.? And I was like, this is a very strange topic of this game. These are somewhat risque, risque maids, I would say. And I was like, I don't know what to make of this, but sure, let's try it.

Let's make a thousand copies of this game. We translated it into English. And then I took it to anime conventions, one in Seattle. And I hired these short little Japanese girls. They dressed up and made outfits. And they were demoing the game, teaching the game to people. And people loved it. It was great.

It's an interesting thing. Made culture in Japan is a huge thing. And anime fans know this. it was not a hyper-sexualized thing. It was just cute. It was very cute. And people loved it. They loved the cards.

They loved the game. It's a great game. Some people called it a Dominion clone, but actually most people that really love the game find it much more interesting than Dominion because it has more aspects to it. Yeah, yeah. So what I heard here that's really interesting to me was this, you know, try a bunch of things, throw things against the wall and see what sticks.

And I think so what that translates to me, which is interesting, right? Because I, you know, I'm, I run a business, but I come at this as a game designer first and you come at this as a businessman first. And as a game designer, I teach the principles of like the core design loop, which is like, you've got, you don't know if your ideas are good until you test them. You have to iterate and find out. And so you try to make the cheapest possible like prototype test that you can to see if something works. And then if it does, then you do more of it and you invest more in it. And right, it sounds like that's exactly the same process you used with your business. Is that, is that accurate where you're just like,

all right, let's try a few different things, small bets, thousand unit runs, whatever. And then sometimes it doesn't work and you're out the money, but then when you find the one that does, you can kind of double down, triple down, quadruple down, and suddenly you've got yourself like surviving business lines. Well, yeah, and we found it very interesting. We just found this huge need and interest in anime game, game, board games, and that became our focus. We were also importing card sleeves from Japan. If you remember back in those days how Japanese card sleeves were a huge thing. People were, you know, going to the pro tours, buying the Japanese, the KMCs, the Yanomans sleeves, which are really, really popular and hard to get.

But I was, I mean, back in those days, early on, before Japan and May, before coffee house games even, I was going to Japan with suitcases full of magic cards. I'd go to the Grand Prix events and I'd go to stores all over Tokyo, and I would sell and trade for Pokemon cards back in those days, Japanese Pokemon cards that were worth $5 there that were worth $100 over here. And I'd go back and forth. I kind of called myself a Marco Polo of trading cards back there. That's cool. Yeah. And you've done more travel than maybe anybody that I know. And that you travel like, I mean, most weeks out of the year, at least certainly the majority. I don't know how many you spend home. But how does that, you're just naturally suited to that and just kind of rolls with it?

Because I think most people would have trouble with that kind of level. I mean, even during my days as a pro magic player, we'd be traveling, you know, every month. I'd be somewhere new. But, and now I'm a digital nomad. I guess, but still, it's more stable than I think your life, which is convention, convention, convention. Well, speaking of which, I'm actually home for just a week. I was just in Japan for the last nine days. I came home a couple days ago. I'm still jet lag, so I just, but in a week, I'm starting travel, and I will be traveling for 30 days straight, going to something like 10 cities, from one to the next, to the next, to the next. we actually have seven conventions in the month of May leading into early June. Yeah.

And that drive and willingness to kind of do whatever takes, travel, move, work hard. And just like, you never seem to tire as far as I know. You never seem to like slow down. It's like very impressive. Do you have anything that you attribute that to or just kind of natural inclination or you're just like passionate about it or you're, I've just always curious because I think that fire and willingness to, to, To do that is such a superpower.

I have a very good constitution. I'm healthy. I'm strong. I keep going. I mean, I'm thankful for that. Yeah. You know, a lot of people would get very,

very exhausted by what I do. And it is true. I mean, I travel nonstop. It's rare that I'm home for more than two weeks. I've always got a new thing to go to. But also, I am trying to,

spend sections of time home more so so I can get more projects completed because there's so many things we're working on at Japaname. Yeah. Yeah. No, that's right. Working and you're constantly building new things. It's amazing. And then, okay, I'm going to use this as a transition hook here because not only do you have all these things going on with Japan May and so many projects and so much travel and so much convention work and cool new projects, even cool new projects with me, which we'll talk about soon. You also then decided, you know what, that's not enough. I'm also going to take on the presidency of gamma. That is a non-trivial, as my understanding, non-paid position that you chose to take on. Maybe give a little bit of a short thing about what Gamma is and what

your role is in why, in God's name, you would take on all this additional work. Why in God's name? That's a great question. So Gamma is the Game Manufacturers Association, of which I have been a member for over 20 years. And I go to Gamma the Trade Show. Gamma is an organization, but it also has Gamma Trade Show, which is now called Gamma Expo. And I go to that event every year. And of course, I see you there.

But I decided a few years ago to run to be on the board. And it was very interesting to me to get to dive into that and to help people in the industry and kind of give back. I found it very fulfilling. I was talking to all these different people in the industry that were new, that needed help, that had ideas, and not just me helping others, but I was learning from others at a much greater speed than I had in years. Because I found myself inserting myself into situations and conversations with other people in my industry that I would learn from, from their needs, and I could apply that to my own business. Great answer. What a great answer. Oh, I love that answer so much. I have a desire to give back. And in turn, I receive and I learn and I grow. That is like the best like motivation subset I could have you could have said. So that's that is wonderful. Okay. Great. And I want to echo the value of Gamma as an organization. You know, for for me, I would not have. I mean, it was the place I launched my company. I brought Ascension when I had very little savings or anything. Yeah. I brought it in a little booth and just showing it off and like grabbed us. whatever I could prototype and, you know, we got such a reaction. I was able to talk to the distributors and the retailers and get everybody so excited.

That's what convinced me to really invest in a big print run and launch the game at Gencom that year. And then since then, yeah, I go every year because I get to reconnect with people like you and people in the industry that I know and build new relationships. And so it's a great, like, hub. It's just the event itself. And then, you know, I don't probably, I don't take advantage of the not convention things as much as maybe I should. So maybe talk to somebody that's like me in this position,

somebody else out there that's like in addition to going to gamma the show, what else might I or other people that are like me take advantage of in the world of Gamma, the organization? Sure, yeah. I mean, for years, so many people have thought of Gamma as being a trade show. That's what Gamma is to so many people. But on top of that, we have all these online networking events. Almost every week, there's things where people can connect with other people in the industry

and just learn from each other. The networking aspect of Gamma is by far the largest side to that. There's also membership benefits that people can get by joining Gamma and becoming a member. But the largest thing that's changed with the organization over the last few years is for years, it was all about publishers and retailers. And now there's six different divisions within Gamma. People that are with wholesalers, that are creators, that are media and events, manufacturing,

all of these different aspects of the industry can network in together inside of the organization and the trade show itself. Okay, so how would I take advantage of that now? Is there like, I just go to the Gamma website and look for these online events? That's the secret? Yes, well, it's gamma.org is the website,

and people can go sign up, become a member, and they would then get contacted by Brian Borgman, who's in charge of membership benefits and member services and will help on board anybody that's interested in connecting with the whole industry. There's also Origins, which is the Origins Game Fair is our consumer event, and Gamma Expo is our trade show event. So at Origins, there's all these connections and trade show. There's Origins Trade Day, and people can make connections and do things through that.

We're adding more and more seminars to go with that too. So that's very interesting. So it was a year and two months ago that we needed another president in the organization. The president is somebody that's voted from within the board. It's a board of 12 people. And I decided to go ahead and step up and help out even more. And my thinking was we really needed some continuity. We needed somebody to step up and spend the time because we had presidents stepping up for like a couple of months.

getting overloaded and then not able to keep up with it because it's a lot it's a lot to be in charge of so i did it and i came in um and this was right before gamma expo 2023 and the the next thing to let you know just recently i am actually no longer the president uh somebody else up and done dun dun dun shocking news delivered here i don't know it was already news i had news to me it is you i have haven't really, you know, talked about it much. It's just as of a couple of weeks ago because of the fact that I am so very busy with all of our projects. And another person, Nicole Brady, stepped up on the board and said that she was ready to become president. And that was great for me, great timing for me, because I am so busy with our big project, Oshy Push, that I was like, I can't keep going with everything all at

once. Great transition, Eric, let's talk about it. Let's talk about it. Well, I want to thank you for your, thank you for your service. It really, it really does. It means a lot. The organization means a lot. Connecting people means a lot.

And I think even for people that are listening that are not already like in the industry and connected, it's one of the best ways for you to be able to start building relationships, start learning, start connecting. And so it's, you know, people always wonder how you get in the door, how do you start this stuff. And I think there's the consumer facing shows like origins and, you know, other non-game events like Jen Con. think are great. I think the industry shows you you could learn so much so fast and online networking

is something anybody can do. So I think there's a lot of great opportunities there. So, but yes, Oshy Push has kept you busy. It's kept me busy. And it's a, this is, I haven't talked about this publicly much at all, right? I haven't talked about it. Certainly not to my audience here. This is the first opportunity for me to talk about it. You've talked about it a bunch now. And by the time this airs, it will be, we'll have, it'll be on Kickstarter and live and everybody's going to be super excited. But I am excited to share the story because let me paint the scene first. Let's let's just so people could catch up with what happened. So we're world travelers, you and I. And I am over, we are in Copenhagen. I've never been to Copenhagen before.

We're there for a conference and we're hanging out and we're enjoying great food and maybe, maybe a drink or two or three. And, and you've, pose this idea to me. You have a, you, so why don't, why don't you take it from there? Yeah, so this is a project that we have been working on for the last two years in the very beginnings of this. Now, taking a step back even further, I had somebody come to me, gosh, a couple years ago, a little over, who had this idea of making our mascot of Japan Ami Games. she's a character named Akiko, making her into a V-tuber.

And I didn't even know what V-tubing was yet at that time. So she comes to me and she tells me about this idea. And this was somebody I had met years ago at the licensing expo in Las Vegas, actually. She was working for a different company at the time. But she comes to me and pitches this idea of making a V-tubing character of Aikiko and explaining to me what a V-tuber is, which I will now explain to your audience. So a V-tuber is kind of like a live-action animated character, a character that is streaming, that's talking to the fans,

and is responding to any texts or communicating directly with their fans. And it's just an animated character that's full of action and excitement. And people get so excited about these characters. So she shared all this information with me about V-tubers. and I was like, that's a great way to tie in with our fan base. So I hired her. And I said, sure, make this happen. So she worked with an artist and she worked with what's called a rigor to animate that art and bring a Kiko to life.

And then worked with a team of people to make a V-Tubing character that would connect with the Japaname fans and create this fun, fun stream. atmosphere for our fan base. And right about that time, we thought, why not work with other V-tubers out there in the anime world and create a trading card game based off of V-tubers? Because these V-tubers, some of them have millions of followers. Some of them are just incredibly popular. And they're like an individual IP all on their own. And most of them are very much indie.

Or they're a collective of studios. And so we started talking to all these different studios about this idea, and they loved it. So it was about two years ago that we really started connecting with, bringing different studios in on the project, one of which is called Phase Connect, and they have all these different characters, and we're working with them on our first set. So anyway, in the beginning stages of this, we were conceptually trying to think of what type of game this might look like. And then in Copenhagen, I'm talking with you about this over some drinks. This was the first you had ever heard of V-Tubers.

And you're like, I don't know about that. That sounds like an interesting idea. And I was like, you know, I have this cool direction we could take this game. And then you played with it a bit over the next couple of months. And then at GenCon, we met back up and talked about it more. And you pitched this whole idea for the game in a much more fleshed-out, version of what I had originally conceived of. And it was great.

Yeah, this was, this is exactly. I'm going to tell it now the story, yeah, from my perspective, right? Because exactly like maybe many of our audience, like, I was like, I don't know what a YouTuber is. This is kind of, kind of weird. Like, what you explained? I was like, okay. And then I did.

So I was a, I was still skeptical at Copenhagen. But I was like, ah, whatever, you know, I, you're, I love. So my, my motto, right, is work with awesome people, make awesome things, help each other grow. and you are awesome people. So anytime I could find an opportunity to work with somebody that I really love and enjoy being with and I respect, I want to do that. And so I was like,

okay, I don't know about this VTuber thing, but I'm going to, you know, I'll look into it. And I started researching it. And oh, my goodness,

there is a massive and engaged and passionate audience about this. And it felt like a perfect fit for a TTCG, right? It's exactly, you know, kind of anime fans and people who are just like really passionate about the characters. There's lots of characters.

There's like, they're interesting to, to engage with. I was like, okay, this is actually, this actually does make a lot of sense. And then I started working, not just me, but I have a really talented team of people that I used to work on games with, including Nick Fletcher and Jason Zela and a bunch of other great folks. So it's, I brought the brain trust together and we started working on the project. And I started thinking about what could come from this. And it was some of the seeds that you had planted that I thought were really interesting where it's like, okay, look, these are characters

that are like streamers, they're performers, they're influencers, they're, you know, they're, virtual TV stars, I guess. I don't know. It's a weird. And so they're not like... I say they're like influencers. Yeah, exactly. It's like, I mean,

Twitch, most all gamers should be familiar with Twitch streamers, right? Streamers are very popular. It's one of the most like ways people discover games and things. And it's just like that, except instead of seeing the actual person, there's an animated overlay on that person. So you see them,

you know, they're making an animated character do things. And people don't even know who they are. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah. Congnito, they're anonymous, and nobody knows who the person is behind the V-tuber. They know their voice, but that's not it. Well, are the voices, like, a lot of times, like, they can modify their voices and stuff, too, you know?

Yeah, of course, of course. And the funny thing was, from going from not having ever heard of V-tubers to now, today, now I actually, because we recently launched our SoulForge Fusion, and we're getting V-tubers reviewing SoulForge Fusion. So I'm watching them stream and play, and so now they're, like, everywhere. Now I'm like, all, well, I guess we're all V-Tubers now. Why not? I mean, I, but, but so, so, so I'll, I'll, I'll, I'll, I'll, I'll, I'll, I'll, I'll, I'll, I'll, I'll, I'll, I'll, I'll, I'll, I'll, I'll, I'll, I'll,

I'm really proud of the game that we built here, because the idea was, I wanted something that was true to these characters, and I wanted something that felt like it fit in the world of V-tubing. So I didn't want to just throw them into, like, a battle arena and have them start, like, throwing fireballs and, like, you know, having, like, traditional TCG combat, because it didn't make sense, right? what they're doing is their their influencers and their streaming. So wouldn't it be cool if they were actually like battling for subscribers and trying to become the most popular influencer?

And that's exactly what we built into the game. And so instead of, so what to give kind of a brief overview of the mechanics, you pick a persona that you want to embody, which will be one of these characters. So somebody that's a real V-tuber character, real quote of quotes, I guess, a real V-tuber character that people want to play and want to play as, you then move, we have different platforms, which kind of become are like locations that you can battle for. So they represent platforms. You know, we use different terms because we don't, you know, but like things like YouTube and Twitch and different places you could be streaming. And then you move your persona to the platform.

You can play content to create content to that platform to gain popularity. If you gain enough popularity, you win the platform, which gets you subscribers. You first person to get to a million subscribers was. And that's really like very simple. Your persona will earn you funds every So you get like kind of money as your game resource. You use that to play your content, play cool actions, you know, and you get bonuses when you win with clash rewards, when you win in different zones. And the fact that there's these different channels,

these different platforms, creates a really fun tension. I was actually partially inspired by the game Marvel Snap, which is created by Ben Brod, is another guest on the podcast. I highly recommend that episode for those that I've seen that. But I think like that ability to have the, locations modify battle and have them in this case, unlike in a game like Marvel Snap,

the locations are temporary. So the fact that, let's say on a given platform, if you can win three challenges there, three clashes there and have enough popularity, you'll win the platform, but the platform will go away. And so you could overinvest and play a giant, super powerful piece of content and set up and try to win that platform. And that's okay, you'll win it. But your opponent could strategize and go for the other two platforms and win more and have

a better setup over the long term. So it creates a really, again, the story is simple. Move your persona platform, create content. Highest score wins the round. You win enough points, you take it over. But the strategy that comes from it is really deep and interesting. And there's, of course, cool ways to level up and upgrade your persona and make them more powerful and give them more cool abilities.

Like, there was so much fun to it that once I had played around with it enough, I was very eager to show it to you and you got as excited as I and my team were. And so now it's this perfect fit, right, where you're, you know, you kind of found this niche, which I think is exactly the superpower that, you know, you have. It's like, hey, there's this need that's not met. There's an audience here that's going to really fit and created a category. And you brought in the expert to help with that specific type of category, which I love doing.

And it's a funny thing for my perspective, because like, obviously, I make a ton of games. We make a lot of games and we self-publish at Stoneblade. But I can make way more awesome games than I can publish. Like, that piece of it is a choke point for me. Again, you do 100 skews. That's not for me. So it was a great opportunity. It was a great opportunity to leverage our mutual strengths of you to be able to launch a

product like this and bring these IPs together and me to be able to kind of create the game and build something that fit within that world in a way that I think is going to bring something new and say something new about a new kind of game that will feel familiar to both the audiences of the VTUbers and to TTCG players, but will be something that neither has seen before. And another thing I wanted to point out that I really loved about playing the game is it's not just battling over one platform at a time, it's also placing content on a platform and hoping that content does well on that platform. So you are bringing your V-tuber back into your play area every turn, and then on your next turn you put them out and you decide which

channel or which platform to put them on. But if you've already placed content on different platforms, that content will continue to grow and challenge on that platform, even if you're not actively placing content on that platform right now. So it's very thematically interesting. It makes a lot of sense. Yeah, yeah. You're hoping your content's going to go viral. Once you've made it,

you don't have to keep going back to that channel. It's going to keep growing on its own. And if it's enough, then you'll win. Then you'll succeed there. And so yeah, I'm very like, I get like a giddy joy out of whatever you can like find that perfect match between the theme and the mechanics that like creates really interesting space, but just feels natural.

And that's exactly where this is. And so a lot of the strategy of the game comes from tactically, where do you want to put your, where do you want to send your V-tuber, your key personality? And then when do you think you can let, let us continue a certain platform ride with the content you already have there, when you want to strategically choose to give up on a platform

because you don't think you can win it, when you want to fight. There's like so many fun, interesting little interactions. And there's tons of strategies. Like every, we built it so that the V-tubers all have different types of content that they can make and they can mix and match based upon the specifics of their persona. And we try to make those very true to the real characters. And so there's, you know, just trading like like kind of colors in magic or different factions.

And they let you mix and match depending upon the V-tuber you choose. So there's a lot of different strategies and synergies that come in, come out of it. And so it's a surprising amount of depth and collectability that comes out of a very simple game to get into. So it's, it's really fun. And yeah, I'm excited. actually get this into people's hands and see how they respond. I love all the thought that's gone behind the scenes, thematically, of the cards that are in the game and how they relate towards

actually the actual V-tubing stories, the drama that goes on in the deeping world behind the scenes that fans are aware of that they see this. And a lot of those things have been put into the game with kind of nods to different things that have happened throughout the world of V-tubing. So when we first started talking about this, I was telling you, I wanted to make this game based off of acting and playing as the V-tuber, but I didn't know how we could really do this where we had multiple cards for each character, each V-tuber in the game, because you're playing as the V-tuber. And you came up with this great idea, and that's what really sold me on this, that you start the game with a persona card as that V-tuber, but throughout the game while you're playing it, you will draw up. upgrade cards where you basically upgrade, power up your V-tuber with stronger powers. And so it gives you the ability to play multiple different V-tuber cards, different character

cards in your deck, which allowed us to make a lot of cool, fun trading cards to put in the set. Yeah, yeah. So I got to learn this lesson quite a while. It goes back into my game design history. So first of all, you know, there, of course are already games like Pokemon that let you upgrade your creatures, right? and upgrade your characters. But we had to face this.

My very first game I ever worked on was the versus system Marvel and DC trading card game, right? And that one, you've got the same damn superheroes over and over again, right? You can't have a set, a Marvel set without Spider-Man. People want to see Spider-Man. In DC sets, they want to see Batman. You've got to design them over and over and over again, like a hundred times. And how do you do that? How do you keep it interesting?

And so I have already had to wrestle for years with this challenge of how do you take main characters and bring them to life in a collectible game that gives them people new things to collect, super rare versions and super expensive, crazy versions, but also common and accessible versions so that you can, you're most likely,

in a given pack, you most likely want to be able to open up a Batman, but you also want to have a super rare Batman to chase. And I applied that same kind of logic to the V-tubers. People have the characters that they love and they really want, they want to be able to see them and feel like, oh, this feels like a familiar world to me. And then you also want to have the cool,

super rare ones. And we have not just rare because of its gameplay value, but of course we have lots of cool, you know, foil treatments and other cool things. Maybe you want to speak to some of that as well. But before you get into that piece, I'll also say in addition to having upgrades, we also built a lot of design, other design elements that work here. Because sometimes if you've upgraded, one of the challenges of, let's say I've got a four-cost upgrade and a seven-cost upgrade, a ten-cost upgrade.

If I've already played my seven-cost upgrade, drawing a four-cost upgrade doesn't help me. or if a 10 cost upgrade is really expensive and not likely to get help, then maybe I won't be able to play it in my deck. And so we actually built these upgrades. I'll have discard powers that let you use them for additional bonuses, which is another really cool thing that's okay, even if you play too many of these or draw them in the wrong order, they're still like really useful and give your character special abilities.

So that helps more of those to be viable. And then the last piece I'll say before we could talk about cool, other collectible things is that we also want the characters to be familiar and show up all the time, which is why on the content cards, content is just saying, hey, these are cool videos or pieces of content that the characters are making.

So we can make those same characters show up on the content cards. So you have even more ways to collect the cool characters you see, even if it's not the persona or an upgrade of the persona as like a main character. We can litter the entire world with these characters and have them interact in cool ways and have them show up in cool ways. And that helps us to, again, and make it feel like the people who are fans of this, will find the cards they're looking for,

we'll see the characters they're familiar with, and the people who want to really hunt down the super rare, cool versions or have that there. So really making the world come alive and feel natural was a key part of this. So now let's talk about all the cool other things that were mostly on you, not on me, which is making the really cool cards and variants and neat stuff like that. Yeah, I mean,

well, I have been involved in the world of trading card games since the very beginning with magic. And back in the day with cardhouse games, we sold so many different games. And that was our focus. We were selling, obviously we were selling Pokemon. And then we were doing things with Yu-Gi-O before that came out in the States. We were selling Japanese Yu-Gi-O cards. So we were selling single cards for, I believe, about a dozen different games at one time,

with Lord of the Rings, Star Wars, just a variety of different trading card games. So I've got a lot of experience with collecting and selling and chasing. and chasing the trading cards. So we put a lot of that into the game with different versions of rarities. And we know that people mostly are going to get excited over getting the favorite V-Tuber cards, getting those chase cards. So that's what we focused on for the more rare cards. There are all the persona cards and the upgrade cards.

We've got borderless versions of some of those cards when they become more rare. Foil versions, foil signature cards. That's a really cool aspect. So each one of these V-tubers has a signature that goes with them for their personality, their persona. And so we are now going to be taking those foil signatures and printing them on the cards. But as part of our Kickstarter campaign, something very cool that we're doing, is actually hand-signed cards, which people just don't see. People don't have that connection to the V-tuber. The V-tuber is something completely removed from them digitally,

but we're going to have cards signed by the talent. That's what the V-tubers are called, the talent. We're going to have cards signed by the talent, by hand, and serialized and very, very, very rare that will be available to people on the Kickstarter campaign. So that's kind of like the penultimate, rare level of something to get for the fans. That's very cool. Yeah, that's like interesting.

It's like, I don't know, it's like I could get Batman to sign something for me. This is, I can't do that. It's like, oh, you're not, you're real, but you're not real, but you're kind of real. Like, this is cool. All right. I like it. Right. That's neat.

Yeah, so this is great. And this is, yeah, this is like one of these. This is fun to share as like a conversation, you know, with the audience here. Because you're, I really do think this was a, an area where our respective skill sets and interests in how we approach these things really meshed super well. well, obviously I'm maybe a little biased, but like this, your baseline and your history as a collector and as someone that really understood these markets and how to bring these things back and forth. And then, you know, my just like obsession with DCG is at game mechanics since I was,

you know, 17 and playing magic for a living. And, uh, and I think that like it just, it ended up just being this really cool overlap of like, you know, mutual passions that created something that I think it's going to be, you know, I think, honestly, I mean, it could be really huge. Like, it's obviously, we don't know at the time of this recording, but it will be pretty obvious by the time people are listening to it. So you're going to actually go down and check out the Kickstarter and you'll see. Well, no. Obviously, we're doing a lot to promote the game and with online marketing and advertising

and promotion. But, you know, we touched on the fact that I travel so much and I go to so many events. This month, in Japan, my games, is going to be at seven different conventions. at all of these conventions, we have produced 100,000 promo packs that we're going to be giving out at these conventions to draw attention to the game and the Kickstarter campaign. So that is a super cool thing that we've never done before.

I mean, we've done a little bit of promotion at our conventions for different Kickstarter campaigns that we've run, but this is the first time we've gone just hog wild like this. We've got marketing going on at each one of these conventions. We're giving out the packs, and that's starting at Anime Central. which is in a couple of weeks in Chicago. We'll be giving out 30,000 of these packs,

one to every con attendee, and people are going to be super excited about it. Over the course of three weeks, all these different conventions, and then at the end of it is going to be Offkai, which is the V-tubing convention. It's not a huge convention, because it's totally focused on V-tubers,

but it's the absolute place to be if you're into V-tubing. Yeah, yeah, it's fascinating. The ability to reach all these different audiences, and the ability, I think it's going to be really interesting to see them react to this kind of product because they don't have, you know, much like I was not exposed to vtubers. I think a lot of them are not exposed to a lot of different TCGs and certainly not ones that, like, fit right in their wheelhouse of the IP that they're interested in. And I think that's something that's really going to be a great success for us as well because

of the fact that for years, Japan Anime Games goes to all these different events. We're connected to the gaming room at all these anime conventions. We're usually they're promoting our deck building games, our board. games, but we're going to be able to come in and right off the bat be promoting the card game, the trading card game at these conventions, running tournaments and doing promotions alongside the conventions because we built up this great rapport and connection to all these anime cons. So this actually is an interesting then follow-up, right?

Because you have the, obviously getting promo cards of people's hands and getting the game, people to demo the game and see the game, get them excited about is One Piece. Another thing that people have a lot of expectations around when it comes to Say again? That's a different game, One Piece. Oh, ha ha. Wow. Hey, anime humor.

Love it. But the other thing is organized play, right? And getting people to support and believe that there's going to be a community around this game going forward. What are your plans around organized play? How do you plan to support this community once we actually get into launch and beyond? So we are doing actually something I kind of took from you, which was creating a monthly promo. cards to work with retailers and sending those to league type of play experiences at retailers, because I know you did that with Ascension, something we've talked about, and making special

exclusive promos that are just for retailers to drive people into stores to get those, which of course is going to encourage the retailers to want to run events because they're going to have cool cards to make available for their players that come into the store. So that's the biggest way to do that. We also have a Patreon where we make available monthly promo cards for people. So we're going to make cool exclusive cards for people to get that way. But really, it's about going through the channels of the stores and driving that hard at all the conventions. So we'll get people playing at the conventions.

And we go to, by the way, about 40 events a year. So Japaname is going to be set up all over the place in different regions, mostly in the U.S. We've got a couple events in Canada, a couple events in Europe. But we're going to all these events to really drive, create a footprint in each one of these cities, get the players playing and then get them going to their local stores to keep playing. Well, 40 events a year. My goodness. That's so many. Well, that's great.

Yeah. Okay. So you're just going to, much like the rest of your business, you're just going to, you know, power your way through this like personally making all this stuff happen. That's a, that's impressive. That's a present. That's a great commitment. It's a great footprint. Again, just from a business strategy perspective too, right? You're leveraging again, the things you're already doing, right? The skill sets you already have, the infrastructure you already have to be able to get a game like this off the ground and support a game like this, which, you know, very few companies have that kind of infrastructure at all. So it's a really, it's a really great capacity. And of course, you know, the idea that my idea that you're copying, I think is a great idea. But no, it just, you know, it's something that's like light, right? But it's, but it's, but it's, but it's, but it's, but it's, but it's, Like having promo cards available, having the people to get something exclusive supporting stores so that retailers really have an opportunity to draw people in and compete with online sales and things like that and have a reason for people to come to the store and come to play. I think that's like key to the health of a long-term game. So that's exciting.

But I'd like to touch on one more thing about this for the promotion. The thing that's really interesting about this game is that the V-tubers themselves that are excited to have new merch, new things to give to their fans or sell. to their fans or whatever, however you want to look at that, they are going to be talking about being in this game, right? So as I mentioned, they're kind of like influencers. Well, the influencers are going to talk about some things that they're attached to and connected with. And it's going to be a huge connection for all of these people to be excited about playing the game. And eventually, we may work on a digital edition for them to play as well. Yeah, yeah. Well, that is something that is exciting. We talked about. And I will just say on that piece,

I built the game with digital in mind. So to say that it will work well in a digital environment, that it'll play quickly, that it doesn't have too much screen real estate, so it could still work again, even on something like a tablet or make it function that way because I have a lot of experience with games

that are digital and physical, as it turns out. So certainly, I think if this hits that tier, and that would be very exciting because I love that aspect of games, obviously. So very cool. All right. cool. Well, we're running towards the end of time here. Obviously, this project's

really exciting and I encourage everybody to check it on Kickstarter. I am biased, but I also think it's just genuinely a great game and great experience, so people should try it. Well, it would be like a free-to-play version, like a PDF download or something people could play or some accessible version so if people don't know or hopefully some other ways

people to learn the game and try the game out. Well, right now it's on tabletop simulator, but it's only available if you're playing directly with our own V-Tuber. A Kiki So she is available to play it with other V-tubers and has been running streams with it. But in a way in which we're unveiling more of the card art, a little bit at a time, more of that art is going to be unveiled during the Kickstarter campaign.

It's kind of during updates and drawing more cool attention to that. The actual physical version of the game will be available later this summer to show it at different conventions where people can play the game as well okay cool well i i'm excited i've only played with our our uglier prototypes so far so i can't wait to play with the real cards myself um so all right where else uh should people go what else should people do other than what we've talked about so far or are any other other last messages uh for the audience before we uh we jump off people can follow the campaign right now on kickstarter uh it's launching on may 15th in just two weeks um we are obviously like i said going to be promoting it at conventions all over the place. We've got all of our Japanamase socials for Facebook,

Twitter, all of that, and our Discord to connect up and follow everything coming out. So there's a lot to stay connected and see what's coming. Yeah, this is awesome. Well, it's been a real joy working with you on this. I can't wait to see how this goes and to work on the next steps. We've got set two is already largely done. Set three is in the set four in the works. Like there's a massive amount of content and planning that has gone into this thing and excitement ahead. And so, yeah, I can't wait to celebrate perhaps over another drink and another interesting country together to see this success and plan the next years of this fun project. Yes, yes.

I'm very excited to see where it all takes us. I think it's going to be a very big focus of the company over the next few years, even though we have so many different games out already based off all these different IPs. and indie games that we've imported from Japan, I think Oshy Push is going to be a substantial section of Japan anime games moving forward. Awesome. All right. Well,

can't wait to see it. And it's been awesome. Actually, finally having a good excuse to get you on the podcast too and to get to work together. So this has been a real joy. And for everyone else, please go check out the Kickstarter. And we'll,

I'm sure, be back with another update on this sometime soon. Awesome. Thanks, Justin. 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 sold.