Think Like A Game Designer - Luke Peterschmidt — Designing for Massive Fandoms, Eliminating Obstacles, and Exploiting Your Superpowers (#107)

Episode Date: July 16, 2026

About Luke PeterschmidtLuke Peterschmidt is a brilliant leader in the tabletop gaming industry who currently serves as the Head of Active Category Management at Asmodee. In this uniquely structured role, Luke has been managing the legendary The Lord of the Rings™ portfolio. Right now, I am incredibly lucky to be working directly with him as we partner up to launch The Lord of the Rings™: Ascension™ on Gamefound this July 14th, 2026. Luke and I have a long history of debating, discussing, and collaborating on projects across the industry, such as Bakugan. In this episode, we unpack the massive operational challenges of stewarding a world as foundational as Middle-earth, how to lead high-performing teams by getting completely out of their way, and how our creative roles must evolve as we scale up our careers. Plus, if you are catching this as it drops, Luke and I are hitting the stage together for a couple of panels at San Diego Comic-Con 2026!Ah-ha! Justin’s Takeaways* The Pressure of Caring a Lot: Nobody wants to be the designer who goes down in history as the one who botched a legendary world like The Lord of the Rings™. Every single designer who touches an intellectual property of this magnitude feels that exact same weight. Creating inside a universe you personally worship is an unbelievable mix of intense excitement and raw terror, and it leads to a lot of sleepless nights trying to make something great. At the same time, that fear is a feature, not a bug. You want to hunt for the specific creative projects that scare you just enough to force you out of your comfort zone and push you to build a masterpiece.* Strategy is Saying No to Easy Money: True corporate or creative strategy has absolutely nothing to do with hitting a random quarterly budget number; it’s about having the discipline to turn down fast cash if it derails your ultimate vision. You have to define a strategic roadmap so crystal-clear that anyone on your team can look you in the eye, throw your own words back in your face, and tell you “no” and you have to completely agree with them. If a quick, short-term win pulls your focus away from your long-term destination, you have to let it go.* Look for Strengths, Not Weaknesses: We waste way too much mental energy trying to patch up our minor flaws instead of ruthlessly exploiting our core superpowers. In game design, a product with a few visible imperfections but a mind-blowing, uniquely memorable hook is infinitely better than a perfectly polished, completely smooth pearl that has absolutely nothing special to say. The exact same rule applies to your life. Stop agonizing over your baseline weaknesses, and instead just build a killer team or find the right tools to handle them, and pour 100% of your focus into what makes you exceptional. 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 speak with world-class game designers and creative pioneers across multiple industries. Each episode takes you on a deep dive into the creative process, exploring the nuances of game design and the extensive cultural, technological, and business factors influencing various creative fields. Tune in for practical tips and inspiring insights that will expand your creative perspective, whether it's inside the gaming realm,

or beyond. I have something I am so excited to finally announce. If you are serious about designing games, not just thinking about games, not just listening to the podcast and dreaming about games, but actually finishing your own designs, then I have created something for you. It is the brand new Think Like a Game Designer design lab.

It is a step-by-step system that I have created and tested with dozens of other creators and other aspiring designers that includes over 60 less than. to take you from generating ideas to building prototypes to finding playtesters, refining your core design loop all the way through publishing, running a crowd fund, and even getting hired in the industry. You'll also get access to my private design discord filled with me, members of the Stoneblade team, and other creators all actively building games.

Plus, I've got some incredible bonuses for people who join right now and for longtime fans of the podcast. If you're ready to stop pretending and start actually doing, designing games with intention. Check out the Think Like a Game Designer Design Lab at justingarydesigns.com. In today's episode, I speak with Luke Peter Schmidt. Luke is the head of active category management for tabletop games at Asma Day. And in that role, I get to work with him directly for creating the Lord of the Rings Ascension.

He has been managing that brand incredibly well. For more of Luke's background, you actually can listen to the first episode. that I did with Luke, which I will link to in the show notes, goes into a lot of his work, our co-work on Bakugan, how games and marketing tie together. But in today's episode, we really talk not only about what it's like to manage an incredible IP like the Lord of the Rings and how you work with external teams, but also we talk about how to build successful teams and how as your career evolves, your success really becomes the success of others, how to be a leader, how to be able to manage and grow teams that you're

not even on or the people you don't even interact with. Luke has been a leader in the gaming community more broadly for many years. He's been a great friend and we have debated and discussed and educated each other on so many aspects of game design, the business of games. We dive deep into how do you build good games for intellectual properties like The Lord of the Rings and show that there's no one right way to do it. So we talk about the Lord of the Rings, we talk about other IP. So if anyone's ever thought about making incredibly cool games for major IPs. There's a lot to unpack here. If you want to know more about how this is done,

I strongly encourage you go follow the GameFound campaign for the Lord of the Rings ascension. We are launching on July 14th, 2026, so it's going live very soon after the recording airs. Also, Luke and I will be on a couple of panels together at San Diego Comic-Con. So if you want to come see us live, you can come see us there. But even if you can't make it live,

even if you can't back the campaign or are not that interested in the Lord of the Rings specifically, there's tons of incredible information here about how you make games that can resonate with audiences of millions and with worlds that are so ingrained in people's lives and that people have such a great personal connection to. It's been a great honor to have Luke as a friend, to get to work with him directly, and to share his insights with you. So without any further ado, here is Luke Petershmidt. Hello and welcome. I am back here with Luke Petersmith.

Luke, it's awesome to have you back at the podcast, my friend. It's great to be back. Great to be back. Yeah, we got to cover so much great material the first time we did a podcast. And then I think that was still before we had actually worked together directly at all, though we had worked on similar projects at different times. And then since then we got to work briefly on a project that never saw the light a day while you were with AEG, though it's still in my back pocket is something I want to

launch at some point because I love that project. But even more excitingly, we are working on what I think is the coolest thing that I've ever gotten to work on right now. And we are working together on the Lord of the Rings ascension. And for anybody that's listening, this is going live. We just announced actually right before we started recording. The campaign is going live on Gamefound on July 14th of 26, which is where we are now. So this is going to be incredibly cool. And the origin story for how this happened is fun from my perspective.

But let's start a little bit further back and talk about how you got into this role and what is your role right now. And let's talk about what it's like to be managing one of the coolest IPs of all time. Sure. So it's my technical title is Head of Active Category Management. And the company I work for Asmoday did a deal with Middle Earth Entertainment where we would become, what we call the category managers for tabletop games and game accessories. So while Asmody is a game publisher, this is bigger than just Asmadae, because Lord of the Rings is bigger than just Asmody. So my job is to make sure that Lord of the Rings fans have the right number of Lord of the Rings games of all types.

I want to make sure if you're a Lord of the Rings gamer who likes a certain type of game, that there will be one for you. And then that means working with outside publishers as well as Asmada, which is super fun. And Lord of the Rings is such a good. of unique property because it is so foundational in a way that I don't really think we have a foundational science fiction property, but it is so foundational to all things fantasy. Every time I see a generic fantasy game with a dwarf and a vines and a tall elf, I'm like, that's just unlicensed Lord of the Rings. It's just what it is. Yeah, yeah, I actually kind of joked about that because I got, I've been interviewed a couple times about what is the, what was it like to adapt

ascension to the Lord of the Rings. And I'm like, like, low key, I pretty much ripped off Lord of the Rings to make Ascension in the first place. So just like everybody else, like I'm not, yes, I created my own world. Yes, it has its own rules. But let's not kid ourselves, all the tropes for all of fantasy, basically that we use in the modern era, has an origin point in the Lord of the Rings. And so it was very easy to convert my lifebound faction to elves and the mechana faction to dwarves. It was like a pretty but pretty natural transition. Yeah. I think that's an amazing statement.

When you have a property that's so foundational that others can take it and go their own direction like you do with the ascension or any of the Dungeons and Dragons worlds did the same thing. It just says something to, I don't know, fantasy is so different from science fiction because fantasy, the idea of a map. Like we've talked about this. Maps are really important for Lord of the Rings. When you have a fantasy world, you draw a map and you define what's on that map.

And then with time, you define what's on that map. find further and further down. With a science fiction property, you design a universe. And then when you want to make new stuff, you just add a new planet further away. And so you're not forced to make a cohesive world that makes sense, like you have to do with a good fantasy world. And I think Lord of Rames was the first to do that in a way that was just powerful. Yeah. So let's talk about managing this license and how you think about this. Because it's like there's a few interesting aspects to it, right? There's the fact that the Middle Earth Enterprises controls the master rights to it across a wide variety categories. And they've chosen Asmadae and you now directly to manage that for board games.

And Asmade has made the choice of not just doing all that work internally, which in principle they could have done, but also partnering with people like me to make games that are in that genre. Were you part of the decision to make that happen and to create that sub-licensing thing? Like, How does that, I think that's pretty rare as far as I know. So what, what, walk me through that a little bit. Like, how did that come about? Sure. It's a mix of a couple of moments of history.

Fantasy Flight is making more of the Rings games for a long time. So they have a very close relationship with Middle Earth, very trust. There's a lot of trust there. And then in the growth of the embracer organization, at some point, Middle Earth became part of the same company that owned Asmadae. Recently, though, Azam Day has split off into its own. but a lot of those closeness relationships and understanding of each other was baked in. So when the idea came to start this, and I might be in this wrong, but I believe it was Andy Jones

who started the process. And Andy's one of these people who thinks big and new. And I love that. So Andy's, I think it was an idea that started the process. And then at some point they came around and said, we need someone to run this thing, put together what you think is the right way to do it. So I made a big strategy document that said, look, this is the only way I see it being run well. And that's where core values, like being publisher agnostic, were set in stone because rationally, no one should trust as a day,

not to just keep the best stuff for themselves. Right. And so I said, we have to start this way, and we have to live in a place in the company that makes those doubts go away, and we have to prove to people through actions that this is what we mean. We are taking such a long, view to our processes and our goals. Our win is Lord of the Rings becomes more popular in five

years, in six years. Most licensing is how much do we make this quarter, right? That's how licensing professionals are generally judged, like this quarter this year. I have a calendar out of 2031 of releases I want and releases I've signed. Yeah. That's amazing. Yeah. And it is, this is the right property to treat that way because there is no doubt in my mind in 2013 Lord of the Rings is still going to be popular. Right? I don't need to cash in at the height

because there's no height, it's Lord of the Rings. It's going to eat here. It is so infinitely stable that you can take a long view and you don't lose anything in the short term. I'll take that long view. Yeah, and there's something that, you know, before getting into the process

and working on the games and working with you guys directly, which I now have more insights and we'll get to that. but just as a customer, as a fan of Lord of the Rings and as a game player, there's a lot of Lord of the Rings board games out there. Card games, board games, all different. There's a lot of them.

But what has shocked me is the consistent level of quality. There are plenty of IPs out there, and I have worked on several of them, where the IP holder just hands things out, right? Like when I was working on the Marvel trading card game, the versus system trading card game, Marvel had its approvals process was, did the check clear? Yeah? Okay, good, you're good.

They did not care. There was no quality control, nothing whatsoever. And now I know from working directly with guys that the quality control and approvals process of checks and balances is quite deep. But maybe we get into what has made this so unique? How have you or has the brand even before your time succeeded in keeping the bar so high for games that otherwise might have just exhausted and just gone to cash the check or repeated the same tropes over and over again?

That is such a great question. I think that some early Lord of the Rings games were just great for being great. The Reiner game was great. And because there wasn't a lot of Lord of the Rings games, the big one stayed in print for a long time. And then nobody, no game designer, wants to be the game designer that designs the bad Lord of the Rings game. There's a lot of pressure. If you're going to come to us and say, you want to do a Lord of the Rings games, we will have a high bar because, and I think honestly, though, as much as I want to say it's us saying it has to be better,

I don't think game designers want to let Lord of the Rings get a second-class treatment. You don't get many chances to work on a property like this. Yeah. None of us got into this industry, even if we've made good money here, none of us got in this industry to get rich. That's not the reason most of us came. And if you get a shot in your career to work on a Lord of the Rings or some other product of that scale, man, you can't screw that up. You got to put your best in. And Lord of the Rings fans, they know the IP so well.

they will crucify you if you get something wrong. Oh, yes. Yeah. They are very passionate and very deus. We've started spoiling art for the game, right, as we've gotten art approved and little teasers. And we've got a lot of great reactions, but also like very granular. Hey, the size of this relative to the background barley,

the size of the hobbits doesn't look right. And here's the thing here. And we're like, oh, I'm like, okay. And you know what? We fixed it. We changed it. Like, we were wrong and we fixed it. And so the fans really care.

And we want, I feel. I feel that pressure, I think maybe more than any other time in my career, I absolutely feel that pleasure. I do not want to botch the Lord of the Rings. Everybody on my team feels that way. We've also kept adding more work to ourselves because we had a pretty light cooperative mode. Essentially has a solo mode, but it's primarily like a competitive deck building game. And then the demand for cooperative and make that feel like part of Lord of the Rings was so great. We've added a very extensive cooperative mode that's taken tons more effort than I did not expect. But, you know, the team is happy to do it.

We're all working extra hours to make it happen because we want to deliver experience that really feels like the Lord of the Rings and is a great, unique experience. It feels like Ascension, feels like Lord of the Rings, brings them all together. It's a labor of love for sure. I'm not sure if we talked about the Brandywine Festival last time we talked or not. Do we talk about any of the Lord of the Rings stuff last time we chad? Not on the podcast or certainly. Okay.

So there's an event called the Brandy Wine Festival. It is a first time we ran last year. It's like a live action role play, 1,400 people, full Hobbit gear for five. days or four or five days. I went to it this year or last year and I sat in a hill and I watched everybody walk by an hour and a half. It was just research, right? And every, and of course I was dressed like a hobbit I was in. But every person that walked by was smiling. There's something about the Lord of the Rings fan that when you got the feedback like the barley is at a scale for the height of the Hobbit, right? It was a comment. It didn't, I just find these fans don't come with

the vitriol, generally speaking, of some. fandoms. The fans are just pleasant and like-ball. If you're a fan of the movies, they don't think you're less than a fan of the books. You're just in favorite movies. They go, cool. The movies were good. And they were good. Movies were good. Yeah, they were great. They're picky. They're picky because they know what right is because they've studied it in a way that is obsessive in the best possible fandom way. Yeah. And it's really fun for us because I read the books and was a fan of of the books before the movies. I also loved the movies, but it's great to be able to now. bring forth Tom Bombadil is in the set and bringing through all the little characters and oddities that

were in the books that people who joined the world and the universe from the movies and haven't necessarily gone deep into the lore and to the books themselves it's really fun to be able to bring all of these characters out and different events out and bring them to life in the game as well my code is for the super fans they're swan feather people which means they know that the flower or the feather on tom bombidels had is a swan and that it matters and everyone else is like to I don't know, it's a feather. Like, both are acceptable in the world, but when the swan feather person speaks, they're usually right.

Yeah. It is a swan feather because swans were all owned by the royal family in England. So it meant something that he chose to say, Tom Bombadil can kill a swan and take its feather. Yeah. It is amazing. So when I've gone through this process, many times with different IP, but as you mentioned, the Lord of the Rings is particularly important. But I want to deep dive.

little bit for anybody that's thinking about designing a game for an IP that's existing and beloved. What are the core principles? How should people think about it? And I'll let you kick off. I obviously have a lot of thoughts here, but we've both done this on a lot of different projects. So what is it, what's the right way to approach a project like this from your perspective? I don't want to give the worst answer. There isn't a right way there because a game like, I'll use Lord of the Rings, Lord of the Rings, Yatzee, which is just Yatsy with Lord of the Rings things. it. That's what I call a brand surfer. It's just surfing on some visual brand value, but it's not a zero value product. Some people want to play Yatsi, and they want to be reminded about their favorite

IP. It's like wearing a t-shirt. But when you get into games that make you the player, an active participant in the actions or the culture or the moments of the books, you have to do your best to make sure the kind of decisions you're making as a player makes sense to fans of the books. What do I mean by that? You should not be able to use money to pay a ring rate so they don't kill you. That is not a thing you should be allowed to do. And you got to get those things right. And when you get it great, there's a review of the fate of the fellowship pandemic game, 40 minutes long by an obvious scholar or Tolkien. And he goes into all the themes that are present in that game that are present in the books. Now, that was an extreme example. Non-romantic love between friends,

like these things that are deeply ingrained if you are a huge Lord of the Rings fan. Not every game needs to be that successful. The worst thing is things that take you out of the moment, and it feels, that's like when we started the Ascension game, it wouldn't be enough to be Ascension with Lord of the Rings art on it, right? Because that doesn't, that could exist without Lord of the Rings art on it. When you put Lord of the Rings art on, it's got to have some Lord of the Rings feel and mojo. Art styles, it's a literary license. You can go wildly different. That's a whole leper talk.

But it's that decision. It's the levers in the game. You want to make it feel like levers of a character. Yeah. Yeah. And I want to deep dive into the game design part, but just since you mentioned art, I actually, this was a really interesting thing. And in my art director, he takes us as seriously or even more seriously than I do to make

sure that he gets us right. And we did a full survey and research of all the games that are. There's probably more of the Lord of the Rings art than there is art for any other IP in the world, potentially. I don't know. It's pretty insane. But there's a, but there's such a wide variety of it, different styles and different approaches and different takes on it. So it wasn't as much in my head when I first started working, but I assumed that it was all this sort of high fantasy similar style. And it's very much not. There's a lot of really interesting takes on how you can present this world that still feels like the world, but gives it a different lens or a different palette

or different ways that it can be represented. Yeah, that is a beauty. That's one of my favorite parts about the property is you get to take, as a publisher, you get to take some liberties. Liberty is the wrong word. You get to have your own artistic style, and it can be, like,

think by those Hobbit movies from the 70s, it's still the Hobbit. And then you'd have the Hobbit movies that came out recently with really scary-looking wargs, and you're like, these don't seem like the same thing. It's fine. Take some swipes. Look at the Dutch art for the Hobbit and it will just confuse you. The art that's in those books is what? Gollums of fuzzball with arms or it's all over the place. Yeah, that's great. Yeah. And so when I think about designing

a game in the space, right, what I want, and I think this is true for the art as well, but when the game is my core area where it's, there are certain emotional cores to the property. And your job is to be able to evoke those emotional cores within the paradigm of your game, right? And so when I think about the Lord of the Rings, there's two, the two major themes that came through for me and that are the most important. One is this sort of idea of corruption and temptation, right? The Ring and the Ring and that temptation and that constant battle and struggle against it. And some people fail and some people succeed and it goes, could go either way. that is the heart of the tension of the story.

And then the kind of counterbalance of that is that the bonds of friendship and hope in the face of adversity and that us together, even against overwhelming odds, if we're true to each other, we can accomplish incredible things. Like those two kind of poles to me are the heart of the Lord of the Rings. Does that resonate with you? Is there anything that you would do? I do. I think if you're making a game like you're right with a section that wants to cover the entirety of the story, I think there's no way of getting away from hope and despair. Those are like, and friendship is just a key one. If somebody wanted to make a game that was all about second breakfast, I wouldn't expect

an open despair element, but it would still be a fun Lord for racing. Yeah. Yeah, that actually, that's a really good point, right? Yeah, like, what's in frame and what's out of frame is another question I ask a lot about these such things, right? What is the part of the story that we want to tell? And that part of the story could have a totally different thing, right? It could be that the, yeah, if the entirety is going to survive inside of what's life is like

in the Shire pre-drama. It's great. Okay, that's super fun. You could be having cakes and and ale and pipeweed and figuring that out. I'd play that game too, right? But it's a different, it's a different story, a different segment of the story. They say that the only difference between comedy and drama is when do you call cut, right? At some point, so yeah, that's a good, that's a great, that's a great point as well. And yeah, we chose the most ambitious approach. Our campaign is doing not one, not two, but three games. all at once to represent the three books of the Lord of the Rings trilogy. Each one has a, there's a core mechanic that carries through them all,

but each one brings its own new twist that tells that book's story and reintroduces the characters as they evolve through. So we did not choose an easy path, but man. It is a good one. And we as my job is to limit how many games we even let do that whole path. We don't want a bunch of games that every game can't be about the ring in the volcano. know, I want a second breakfast game. But I think for your product, it was the right call 100%

because you had such core Lord of the Rings sort of thematics already built into Ascension that when you added the Lord of the Rings specific stuff, it was just, it just felt like the right product to do that with. I couldn't imagine a different frame for Lord of the Rings of Ascension. Yeah. And the Ascension, so I'll tell a little bit of the backstory of how we got to hear, right? So the Ascension is already, the mechanics of ascension already tell the narrative of the Lord of the Rings in many ways, right? It's we collectively are recruiting powerful heroes and weapons and we're battling against monsters together.

And just even though it's competitive, the competition is how much honor do I get from killing all of these monsters and us collectively defeating the bad guys, right? So there's a narrative arc that's already built in. So it was an easy port from that sense. And so the way that we ended up working together, which is just really fun to be on this, is I designed 17 standalone expansion sets and God knows how many promos and little mini-packs and stuff. And so to keep myself entertained as I design games,

I will just give myself new challenges. I'm like, what would it look like if Ascension were pirates? What would it look like if it was in space? What would it look like if? And so I gave myself the challenge, what would it look like if it was the Lord of the Rings? And my intention when I did the design originally was just it would push me as a constraint,

to do something design that was unique. And that's where I came up with the corruption mechanic and how that would play out. And in my head, it was still like, I'll make a variation that's in the Ascension universe but uses this idea of corruption and that would be fine. But I had developed the game to that point and everybody on my team loved it.

And then I was like, I wonder if I could actually get the Lord of the Rings license because I've worked with plenty of licensed properties. Stoneblade as a company has never published a license game. We've always done original IP. And then I posted on my social media that was like, hey, who has this license? and how do I get it?

And you commented and said, hey, we should talk. Which was amazing. So I'm very grateful for that. But it was the, we actually talked about this the last time we did a podcast, which is this idea of just doing the things that you're excited about and you're passionate about and following that channel and your design work is not only going to lead to you having a career that you enjoy more, but is often counterintuitively leads to more financial success and more opportunity than just chasing what you think will be.

the biggest financial success and opportunity. And I feel like this is one of those narratives. The danger of chasing trends is always by the time you've figured out the trend, so is everyone else. And so now you're not chasing a trend by your, you're no smarter than anyone else. You're all making whatever the hottest type of game is. And then you just don't know it. You just don't know how many people are doing the same trend. Yeah. Yeah, that's right. Yeah. When I pick projects, I need to have what I call an asymmetric advantage of some kind, right? And that asymmetric advantage could be I'm ahead of the curve in terms of things I can do, right? So Stoneblade, we've got a lot of experience with hybrid digital physical products and have some more technology forward opportunities than a lot of tabletop games do.

So I'll pursue things in that space like I did with SoulFord Fusion and a virtual reality version of ascension and a variety of crazy things. We were the first deck building game to come to mobile. So there's an area there where I'll have some advantage. I think I could get ahead of others. but also just a pure passion advantage can go a long way, right? I'm willing to just work harder and longer than anybody else when it's something I really care about, and that's going to get me an edge. And so working on a thing that's an IP I love and the thing that everybody on my team is insanely passionate about,

we're going to be able to make something that's great, even if it's not chasing a trend or moving in a direction that that passion's going to come through and can give you a pretty big edge. Yeah, you have another just phenomenal edge, which is you've kept the hunger of someone who's starting up with the experience someone who's done it for a while. So you, I was meeting to UK Games, I spoke, with George, your creative director. Yeah, that's right. Yeah, and he's, yeah, no one works harder than Justin. I'm like, yep, that makes sense to me that that work ethic combined with experience, it is hard

to catch. There's a lot of people who will work hard, but without experience, they'll make all the mistakes we've already made. And I'd love to prevent them from making those mistakes. I hate to see human potential lost, but there's a lot of mistakes to slow you down. And once you learn to avoid those, you can be efficient. And then you have the other advantage of you could just put a post out on social media and happen to run into the guy who controls the brand. Yeah. Yeah. And that's definitely the advantage of experience and building relationships over many years and that my social media posts are better connected than others. And also, again, I've built the reputation and credibility of it. I'm not, not anybody can get the Lord

of the Rings license. I can do it because, hey, I've been doing this for so long. You know, you have a reasonable confidence that I'm not going to, I'm not going to do a terrible job with this, that there'll be a quality product. So there's definitely advantages that come with, with experience. But there are flip sides too, which is the, there are traps. Jordan Weissman is a great mentor of mine and he, he talks with this. You need to keep young minds in the room because, well, yes, I can learn from mistakes that I've made in the past and accelerate past those mistakes. I can also become trapped by the, no, that doesn't work because it didn't work when I did it 10 years ago. That doesn't mean that a new version of it couldn't work today. So there's a,

I very much try to make sure that my my experience is tempered by bringing lots of nude, fresh designers in and giving them room to run even when I think it's not not necessarily correct. I'll give my input, but I very much try not to just shut things down, even if I've quote unquote learned that lesson before. Yeah, one of the thing that motivates me is when someone says, a game can't do that. Like, oh, and then that will just, that will make me stay up at night and design games that I have no intention to publish and just be like, nope, nope, you just believe. that because you read it in a blog post somewhere.

And yeah, I'm going to figure out to do that thing. That's exciting. That excites me solving the unsolvable puzzle because I, you know, that's, and even if I end up realizing it can't work, I'm like, all right, I learned a bunch for me. I learned a bunch of process. But I get very frustrated. People say, it's not the way it works. I'm like, oh, that's not the way it's worked in the past.

And that can be procedure, game design, anything. This team that I have here is operating like in no other licensing team I've ever heard of. And people would say, that's not how this works. I'm like, I'm going to make it work. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

And again, just speaking from personal experience, it's been incredible. The team is very responsive. They care, even when we're in the midst of we had maybe what feels like it's the craziest set of deadlines I've ever worked with for timeline to launch the campaign. We've been working on this game for two years, but still how long it takes to get things done and get the campaign launched. And then we added it in a cooperative mode and we had to change the art on this thing. And there's a million balls in the air and challenges to work through.

but it's felt like we are all in the trenches together, right? We're all in the same team, even though you're the licensor, I'm the licensee, and we have this kind of approvals process thing. It's like, it's felt everybody wants to make the best possible product. Everybody feels that and everybody else that's there, and we're all willing to do the work to make it happen. Yeah, you guys got the benefit and the pain of being one of our first partners. For those I don't know, when you sign a deal with my team,

you get like 58-page contract, and it's a lot. It's a lot. Although I love that the last, what, 12 pages are like, important things. for Lord of the Rings games. They're not legal terms. But yeah. Yeah. Yeah, no, from the moment that I told the story up until the social media post and say,

hey, we should talk. But from that moment to get a signed deal in place was like 11 months or 12 months. It was not. Actually, it was longer than that. It was longer than that. It was actually almost, it was, yeah, it was over a year before we actually got the deal side. It was a whole mess of back and forth and everything. So we're building things in parallel.

and the deadline for when we're going to launch stuff is still coming up. And so I'm just going forward as though it's going to work because I have trust. We've had a longstanding relationship. I have a relative trust that is going to happen. But I don't have any excited place. I could just all be burning all of this because I can't wait to make the art. I can't wait to start the process. I can't wait to move forward.

So there's a little bit of risk trust combo has to happen while we're going, you know, build the plane as you're falling type of thing. Yeah, yeah, that's definitely true. And my job is to make my systems better, so it's not as hard on the next person. But yeah, middle of a big company, as of a big company, yeah, going to take time. But we're getting nice. Yeah. And you've talked a little bit about this in terms of my superpower of just I work hard and I still remain passionate about what I do and learning new things.

And a lot of that for me comes about what am I optimizing for in my life. I could retire and stop doing this or just chill. But that does not appeal to me at all. It does. It's not what I want. And I love what I do. I love working hard on exciting projects with incredible people. And I love learning more things and pushing to the edge of what I'm capable of and what's possible literally in the world at large. Move the conversation forward for design and art and community and all the things that got me into this in the first place. So I would just turn it back to you, right? Because you're, you've been super successful. You're further along in the career than I am. You've done everything, pretty much everything there is to do that I could think of in the gaming space and big companies, small companies, every, role within that from design to marketing to product of blah, who knows? Right. So what keeps you

motivated? What are you excited about? That is a great question. I, at some point, I took a break and I started teaching for a couple of years because I felt like I had been successful and I wanted to give back and I wanted to show people that there's a space for them in this industry. And that felt really good. It felt really good to reach some students, college students who might have not thought gaming was a place for them to work. And that was very rewarding. And so that I realized my favorite thing to do now is build successful teams. It is, I have all the experience of all the landmines I've stepped on and a different view I find than people who just come into the industry, which is just time and temperament. So my number one goal is I want to help people be successful.

I don't need to be the name on the jersey that scores the point. I'm happy to be John Stockton, who has the assist. I'm happy to be the assistant coach who just got you ready for the game. I love this industry. I love what we do for the world. That sounds really overstated for an entertainment company. But I think face-to-face interactions with other people are more valued every day. And there's a reason a lot of 20- and 30-year-olds are getting into tabletop gamings. And they're dealing with the same stuff that I do with 30 years.

Oh, you're a nerd. It's a joke in a lot of sitcoms now because it's actually popular. It is a good way to spend time. If I can help people make a living doing that, and I can help people. in their careers to be more successful. That is definitely what keeps me going. I still would like to design a game or too much, I don't have any time.

Yeah, yeah. I hear that. I hear that. The more you run a company and are responsible for others, the less you can be in the weeds and building things yourself. But I also like you, I can't imagine retiring. This job is how I interact with the world.

Yeah. It is, I don't say how it doesn't define me. I have lots of things that they do, but this is the thing that I do that reaches the most of people. And I think you decide that retirement is I'm going to stop reaching other people, I think you just shrank. Yeah.

And that, no interest in that. Yeah. So let's stick into how you build successful teams because when we just, the last podcast we did, you were just getting started at Asmoday and we were talking about that. You were like, oh, man, I really need to figure this out. How do I build successful teams where I specifically like, a lot of times where you're building a team where you're not even engaged with the team after it's set up, right? You're setting it up and setting up the systems and then you're, you got to step away.

So now you've got four or five years of experience. I think since we did the last episode, this is your calling. Help us help others that want to do this thing. What's the key to building successful teams? Wow. None of this will be your evolutionary to anyone's list of your podcast, but clarity of what you expect from people is key. And then I think you just need to go into every relationship thinking this person can do more

than they think they can do. I think the number one limiter for most people is themselves. I don't think when I got in the industry, I said this in the last time. I wasn't qualified for any job I had, but no one else was either. The industry was growing so fast. There was nobody who was an expert at trading card games. The industry was two years old.

I had jobs. I had no business. And I failed at a bunch of stuff and I succeeded in a bunch of stuff. So I believe others would thrive in that environment, even if the business environment doesn't present them with that luxury. So I look at all my team members and I think you're capable of more than you think you are. and then they know I believe in them. I believe they can.

And I think people rise to that challenge. And then I think people need to know, you know, what success looks like. And when you push them, it has to be so obvious. One of the studios I worked with before that I started here, off-stock, I pushed them to make a love letter based on K-pop team in Hunter, which just got announced. That team made that game in the most un-asvade, super efficient, fast, exciting way. I saw the development of that game. And I didn't do any of that work.

I just said, come on, this has to be possible. I don't want to hear this is impossible inside of our systems. It has to be possible. I was totally dicked of the movie. It was great. I'm like, you can do this. And I didn't come out and say, you have to do this. I said, I know your skills.

You can do this. This is doable. And if someone tells you, it can't be done for reason X, come to me, and I will remove reason X. And so my job is mostly taking away barriers. One of the things I end most of my daily meetings with is just what do you have in your way and how can I help you get rid of it? Right.

And that is if you've empowered your staff and you've given them a clear target and you've made them believe in themselves and you get things out of their way, they'll generally be successful. And when they fail at small things, you just have to go, I failed at a bunch of things. It's okay. Give them things to fail that early that are small so that later when you give them big things, they'll be fine. Yeah. Yeah, I love that. One of the phrases, I think leadership is, I have very high expectations for you, and I will be there when you fall. Yeah, that's a great.

He used 12 words. Yeah, 100%. Yeah, look at my team now. It's a small team. It's three people. And I can tell you all, I know their strengths because they're obvious to me. I don't look for people's weaknesses. I look for their strength.

I think we spend, I know I can be able to do this. I spend too much time trying to cover my weaknesses instead of exploiting my strength. And I've seen so many products come out that have one or two flaws. But what's good about them is so good, no one cares about the flaws. And I just learned that is a better path than make a game with no flaws. If you think about Magic of the Gathering, I got an idea. How about a game that you buy and you can't even play? Because you can't play it.

Or Warhammer 40,000. How about a game you can't play until you invested 25 hours in painted, right? Those are problems with those games. But what was so good about them made them overcome those problems? Yeah. I believe that way with people too. Focus on what you're great at. Don't worry about the other stuff.

Unless you think it's holding you back, probably, is it? Yeah. Yeah. My guess is that there's a balance to be struck there. And Mark Rosator, he told me his phrase, it stuck with me for freaking 15 years now or more. Your greatest strength is also your greatest weakness. That whatever the thing is that is driving you, right? We talked about my work ethic, right?

I very much, if I see a goal, I will just bulldoze my way to the goal. I don't care what happens. I am not going to stop until I get to the thing. And that's really powerful. But it also, I will spend a lot of time with a goal I should have given up on. I really should have stopped. That was not the correct path that I could have, if I zoomed out a little bit, saw the bigger picture, diverting and pivoting would have been a better strategy, right?

I've tried to be aware where something that's a strength. I don't want to lose that drive, but I try to find systems to help check the worst of those impulses slash create. So what I'll do is when I have a project, at the beginning of the project, I will set metrics down the road of, okay, if I'm not able to get to here by three months or this process by six months or whatever my metrics for success are, I set them up early when I'm not so invested. So that as I move through and get to the process, I'm like, hey, listen, you've already previous you put the rails on. You should be listening to the previous you, not the version of you that's just not going to let go and just wrestle your way and do whatever it is you said you were going to do. Yeah, I think we're actually pretty similar. When I started this job, I planned for six quarters because it was a brand new team.

I'm like, all right, by the end of this quarter, I want to achieve the following things in this quarter. And I thought a month was too short and a year was too long. So I just picked a quarter and I said, because it was highly variable. It was just starting a team. So every month I go back and I look at it and some things get moved forward and somethings get moved back. But I see progress. I think the biggest indicator of long-term success is do you understand the strategy that you're working under? And the leaders need to make that strategy clear.

One of the things I settle time is a strategy is saying no to easy money. It gives you a thing that you could just make quick money if you turn around on, but it takes you away from the stated strategy of your job or your company. It's a mistake. Say no to the easy money and stay on target. Kevin Figuey at Marvel had a bunch of chances to take in the pocket, in the hand money. And he said, nope, I'm going to build the biggest movie franchise of all time. And he did. But it requires saying no to easy money a bunch times.

Yeah, that is hard. You've talked about clarity a couple times and now we're tying that into kind of strategy. So what, yeah, what does that look like? How do you generate clear strategy? How do you communicate clear strategy? And in particular, I'm interested in how that applies to creative work, right? Defining what success looks like when it's like, hey, we need our sales to be 10% higher, in the quarter or we need to be able to do whatever very concrete physical deliverable thing that's one thing it's another thing to say we need a game that's great how do you get clear and like what does great mean and who am i trying to serve it so there's a lot there's a lot to unpack there but i'd like to get clear on clarity strategy will never be what the budget is right that's not what strategy is

for me so when i started studio office dog Brian born muller and i sat down he was the first person that worked for me and I feel like this studio exists to try to win Spielier's, which is the biggest award in the gaming industry. And that's a target. It is not something you could say we did it or we didn't do it because it is so hard to win that award. It's crazy. It's the word everybody wants. There's 6,000 games a year. Winning that award is hard. But that strategy focuses you. Like that strategy for that studio was make games based on properties we own, make games with more American game designers and in that process and then make original IPs that might last for a long time. Let's try to win the Spielier.

That had us say no to lots of games that could have been quick, license, short turnaround wins for cash. So that was, that's a strategy that I could, if someone would have come to me and said, Hey, Luke, you just told me to make this game. But our strategy is this. And then I'd have to go, oh, you're right. I'm wrong. The best part about strategies is when you throw it in your boss's face and say, but you said

the strategy is this. and your boss should just go, you're right, well done. And that's where mission statements are a good thing. I know people sometimes give all these mission statement type things. They're not. They're a good thing. If you make them with an idea towards, I want to be questioned about this later. Yeah.

Yeah, I think that's right. And I agree that having a line, especially as the company is larger, but even with a small team, having a clearly documented, this is what we're about. and by by contrast this is what we're not about is really important right so i've talked about this on the podcast a bunch is our kind of mom make work with awesome people make awesome things help each other grow and we create remarkable experiences that the light connect and inspire and these are that's like how we do the things and what we do and then within that we go and we define each of those things a little bit in more detail and a kind of longer version of what that statement is right

so make awesome things that could be vaguely interpreted but for us No, we want things that create lifetime value, right? I don't want a game that you play five times or ten times and then you're good. That's it. I've played that game. And those games are totally fine. There's plenty of space in the world for those games. But that's not what we do.

That's not what awesome is for us. What awesome is for us is you play at the 100th time and the thousandth time. And you're still loving that experience around the table. And that defines what the type of stuff we do very differently than what another company might do. Yeah, I think we, I have a whiteboard over my monitors here. and I always write down things that people say that stick with me, and it's where I used to put my vision statement in my, which I just found in my drawer here for my studios and for my last job.

And the first words are, we help create joy. That is the job, as our job. Now, the company, if you work in a large company, the company has overarching goals that could be very different from your department's goals. And often for a company like Asma Day, we can say, you're the studio that does X and you're the studio that does Y. And that becomes very easy. Someone pitches us a game and we go, oh, you know what, that's not for us.

That's for Moobbox. Go show it to them. And that's helpful. But the big deal for a company our size is we're not interested in singles. I was never interested in singles. If we don't have a reason to make a game and a thought that it could be an evergreen or it will support one of our existing brands, if it can't be a big kid, what are we doing? We're just way too big.

We'll leave that sort of speculative space for other companies. And honestly, As many, buys companies all the time. So if a company has a couple of these hits that are great, we can make those persons life. We can just go buy their company and say, you've done a great job. Welcome to the team. But we've had a lot of studios when I was SVP of Tabletop that canceled games right at the end. All the art done. Everything was done.

And the studio head just said, you know what? I just don't think this is a winner. We might sell some number of thousands of copies. We might make our money back. We probably will. But I don't want to use my marketing person's time. and we only get so many at-bats. This isn't a good enough one for us to say.

And that is the amazing wonderfulness of a big company. That's never going to kill a company besides Vasmin. We're not publisher-perish, but that could hurt other people. But we do that strategically. We do it often, actually. Yeah. Yeah, this is an interesting thing. I came up first in my conversation with Tom Lehman,

and it stuck with me then, but it's becoming more real to me now. You only get so many at-bats. right the career we both neither us want to retire ever but still I'm releasing two games a year maybe three games a year that I can realistically do at max with the team that I have

this is probably more like two and then I have even if I'm going to go with 40 years more I could do this it's still not I have a my list of games I want to make is far longer than a hundred and it's adding to it as fast as I can

faster than I can create them So then I think about those that choice. What are the things I really want to take my time, my limited time on this earth to do? And it's definitely created more, again, more pressure. Maybe that's part of where I get my drive from. In fact, I have a, whenever I open a new tab on my browser, it has a memento mori. It has literally a countdown of how long I'm expected to live by current acuarial tables. It's like the first thing I see.

I think the browser web page or extension. It is. It's great because what, you know what happens by default? You get distracted. The new browser shows you like new random news things or feeds that are going to get in your way. And instead, I look at a thing that says, okay, bro, the clock is ticking. What do you want to do? Do you want to go browse Reddit or you want to get back to work? Oh, my God.

I have to have that. Yeah, that is great. You can find yourself in a situation where you, like I am now, where I'm giving myself one-tenth of a point for every Lord of the I'm not making them, but I am helping them get made and hopefully helping promote them and give them the best chance to be successful they can. So, yeah, my swings are brand wide. And when I was my, it was category wide. I don't need every game that I worked on when I was SVP to be a hit. I need every Lord of the Rings game to be a quality Lord of the Rings game. Those fans are too kind and too nice and I have a responsibility to give them what they want. And I know I'm going to get

feedback, there's too many games, until people start to understand that every game is different. Every game is for a different type of gamer or a gamer who likes a different core mechanic. And today, the fans have been really receptive. So your response for your announcement has been great. Yeah. Yeah, it's been very exciting. It's been the most, yeah, already the most followers we've ever had on a campaign and we're still almost 30 days out.

So much like positivity and excitement and enthusiasm. And it's been wonderful so far. I can't wait to even reveal more. more of what we're actually working on. How great is it to be me and take one tenth of a point credit for all the work you and your team are doing? Yeah. Yeah, that's what sort of scaling up impact looks like, right? And I take as much pride when I have people that went through my game design course or read

my book and they successfully launched a game and did their crowd fund or got a career in the industry. Like, I take that 10th of a point. And that's like, it's so rewarding. It's so exciting. So yeah, that is a great, it's a great frame. It's not just like what you create yourself, but like the ripple effects of what your impact is and what other things get created and how other people's lives are changed based on the work you do and the example you set.

I'm a big fan of like, I like creating teams and then leaving, which sounds weird. There's a, when I was a chemist, I took a class and had to deal with difficult people. And we spent a lot of time on narcissism. And a lot of that was because a lot of chemists are narcissists, apparently. But the class wasn't how to not hire them. The class was how to manage them because they're really good at the job. And there's different colors of that term. So I don't want to, I'm not using it.

I'm literally not using it as a derogatory in this term. But one thing they can't do is leave a team because they have to have their finger in it so they get full credit for whatever's happening. There's nothing better to me than leaving a team or a client when I was a consultant and then have them just crush it going forward. I'm like, all right. I did the thing. Feels good.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And so you get that, that feel good from behind the scenes. but you also like to be front and center, not just on a podcast like this one, but for example, on panels at San Diego Comic-Con, which you and I are going to be joining together in just a few short weeks. That's right. One of my larger companies pillars is for us to take our, not set by me, but set by the company, is to take our rightful places, leaders in the industry, and that means get on panels. Even being on this panel is a strategic choice.

It follows the strategy that the company has. So folks, I didn't have to question. that like when the opportunity came to be on the panel I could say yes and if anyone would have said hey we're not supposed to do that that would have pointed that pillar number six or whatever it is of our company and that this is what we're supposed to do no but I'm looking for that panel because you're going to be on it. Hooray. Yeah, this is going to be great.

So Archaia I'm very excited about it because one, as we mentioned, Lord of the Rings fans are awesome and getting to interact with them directly. I'm very excited about. Two, our campaign will literally be live for I think it'll be like a week into the campaign when San Diego Comic-Con is happening. So it's perfect timing to be out there. And I'll have, I think that'll actually be the first time I have the physical prototype in my hands with all the nice components and everything.

So we can actually play while we're there. And so what, for anybody that can be in San Diego or in this, and you're going to give any kind of teasers or frame this one up for people that can join us? Sure. I think we're on two panel together. The one that I am running is called Designing Games for Middle Earth. And it's a panel of people who have designed games.

or are designing games that are based in Middle Earth and what unique challenges exist in that design. And it's interesting. I'm sure the conversation is going to veer into foundational fantasy Lord of the Rings and then how people took parts of it and then the term fireball is the easiest example, right? Wizards cast fireballs. We all believe this because there's been enough video games and Dungeons and Dragons, But that doesn't happen with the morning rings. Right. So how do you make a world where some people live 50 years, some people live 100, and some people do 10,000?

How do you make that? What are the unique challenges to designing in that space? And it's going to be a good discussion. Yeah. Yeah. Very excited about that. And then I think we're on another panel, which is more generally building licensed games

and working with a variety of different IP and how that all works more broadly, which is also going to be fun. So some of the topics we've already touched on in this podcast, but bringing in a lot more, more minds and deeper dive on those things is going to be exciting. And we'll have some folks from the digital side of there as well. In fact, the CEO of Middle Earth is going to be on the panel that we're on the designing.

And he's someone who's kept on top of every time there's a big return to Moria style game. Okay, you can't do these things that I know you want to do designers who don't know Lord of the Rings well. But thankfully, it's a challenge, but in the best possible way. Because when you get it right, it's really good. Yeah. And there's this counterintuitive thing that I've learned we value the things that we do in many ways and directly proportioned to how challenging that they are.

If the thing is easy and trivial to you, then yeah, you might be happy with the result, but it's just not as valuable. You don't value it as much, right? The fact that it is hard, the fact that the bar is set so high, the fact that I get one crack at this, I'm making my contribution to the Lord of the Rings to be some part of this universe and this ethos that it matters a lot. And I'm willing to put in the work for it because it's going to, when it comes out at the end of the day, when it comes out at the end of the day,

I'm going to be very excited about what we built. Oh, that reminds me, speaking of exciting things we built. I want to talk about one of your contributions to the project, which is you had this idea that we ran with for the collector's edition, which is to turn the whole thing into every one of the sets into a kind of leather bound book that fits inside of this larger bookcase. And I don't know if you want to speak to it, but you had this idea. You just threw it across the bow. I was like, hey, no pressure. It's not my job to do this. But this seems really cool. And we fell in love with it. So yeah, I don't know where that idea came from or why

nobody's, yeah, it just seems freaking awesome. Behind me are some amazing high-end copies of the books. And I probably just had one of those in my hand and went, huh, I'd love to say it came out of my own brain, but slipcase books are awesome. They're just cool. And Lord of the Rings has such a literary. Harper Collins must have 15 different ways you can buy the Lord of the Rings trilogy. And I love all. They just do an amazing job of every price point, travel size, whatever. But these super deluxe things, they're just what fans want. And I know that there's collectors for most fandoms, right? You can be a Star Wars collector like our friend Lisa Stevens is a crazy Star Wars There aren't that many Lord of the Rings collection, which is not that many things to collect.

You can collect some movie props. You can collect old editions of books. They're hyper expensive. So I like the idea of some of these games in your game in particular, being one that will be a pride point on someone's shelf. We play a game a certain number of hours a day. We own that game and it's visible in our house all the rest of the time. Yeah. Make it beautiful.

Yeah. Yeah. I think that's right. and being have something that's just super proud to have, super excited to see on your shelf. And there's a degree to which the games that earn the space on your shelf are your identity. There's the things that you say something about you, right? Even though I am a digital nomad and I have gotten rid of most of my stuff, there are some things that I put in the storage.

And it's those games that really express my identity. And frankly, I even have some freaking DVDs still in my obviously books and bookcase. But even I have DVDs of shows that matter, including the Lord of the Rings, extended edition trilogy with all of the things. even though I did not keep any DVD players. I have no way to play any of those things, but as a kind of decorative piece, the games and books and movies and things

that are like were meaningful to me and remain meaningful to me as something that becomes something I could put on my shelf and have it. It just brings me joy to see it. And yeah, I make a statement. Yeah, I'm a nerd and I love these things. So if you're in my house, you will see that directly. I think that stuff matters.

I've never, I've a lot of friends who have the collector bug. I've never really had the collector's bug. But I definitely have the understanding of pride of ownership. So whether it's a game that, a big shelf of games that you love that define who you are, or you're a car collector and you have a garage and 15 cars and all your friends are like, how many of these do you drive? You're like, I don't care. That's not the point.

The point is I just like beautiful cars. I'm like, okay, I'm okay with this. Like, I have never to be the person that, that unless the way you spend money, hurts another human, say, you're spending money for joy the wrong way. That's just, how can I possibly say that to something? I notice a lot of art pieces on your wall behind you. A lot of guitars on the next to that. For someone who does not collect, I'm going to just push back a little bit. I will explain the guitars as the dumb things I bought during COVID is a piece of art from most of the games I've worked on. Yeah. Lembermento.

of the time I've had in the industry. I don't have much art that isn't connected to something I've worked on. Yeah. In fact, I would say I had more art than I have the actual games in my house. Sure. Yeah, so the art's the way you choose to memorialize that and to have that those memories. So one of the things I've tended to as a trend is actually you have a lot more jewelry than I ever used to. I didn't use to, I didn't wear jewelry or anything like that. But as I'd be in a nomad, I can't carry things. I don't have things. But I can, jewelry. is small enough so that a ring or a necklace or something like this, I got this while I was in Venice from the glassworkers there. I've got a different piece. Each one is like I have a little something

from each place that's like a small physical memory and kind of a totem of those experiences. So I do think that there's something just about collecting and to tie this back to games. Obviously, we've worked on a lot of collectible games. The joy of I have this collection that says, I have all of the elves that have ever existed in magic, right? I have all the things. Like it's a mechanism for self-expression. It's a mechanism for reminding yourself and creating emotions in yourself. There's something just intrinsically valuable about it that I don't want to undersell. I remember when the internet was first created and basically, and people kept talking about PEZ dispensers. I think eBay started as a place to trade to sell PEZ dispensers. Just like a side

project. I could be wrong. Internet will check me on that. But the promise was if you have a strange collection, like or a passion like PEZ collecting or Mon Moor collecting or something strange. The internet will allow you to meet those people and bring you so much joy. And while that can happen on the internet, I just feel like we never really got there. Is it the PES dispenser community really isn't thriving today? Or I don't know. It might be, but it just came with so much other things that aren't so positive as that positive promise.

Because there's not better than when two collectors meet each other or fans of anything and realize that they're both fans of the same thing. And then they can't really have a party and you say, oh, I make board games. Oh my God, board games? So they walk. And then you just talk board games for hours. It's just one of the greatest feelings to see that. Yeah, it is one of the most important things about the way that the modern era has evolved since the internet, right?

Like the Kevin Kelly's 1,000 true fans mechanism for this is something like as a creator saying, look, you don't, you don't need to make something that everybody in the world loves. You just need to find your core niche of people who love whatever weird specific thing that you love to do. And you can make a whole career out of it. And that wasn't true 40 years ago. But it is true now, and it's true not just in the, that's in the terms of if I want to make a living as a creator, but just in the, hey, I like bizarre, whatever thing X. I like pez dispensers. I like bird watching. I like whatever watching for bird pez dispensers, whatever it is.

There's enough people out there that you can find and build your community. And I look at that as a part, a big part of our job, right? It's to facilitate those communities, to facilitate those connections. Whether that's the Lord of the Rings fans getting together at a Brandy Wine Festival or board game fans getting together at Jen Con or just gathering around at a local store to play a game of Ascension or whatever. Those things are real meaningful communities and they're the people who bringing people together who may be uncomfortable socializing in a normal at a bar or whatever with quote unquote normies who aren't into their thing. This stuff, it really matters. It transforms people's lives. It does.

In my current job, I can say this is absolutely one of my focuses is. is I believe if you're a fan of Lord of the Rings movies or books or one or the other, you might really enjoy tabletop games and you just may never have been given the on-ramp that looked pleasing and safe enough and fun enough for you to make that jump. I will work with Middle Earth to get board games in front of more fans. And I will get all of the aspects of the gaming hobby in front of more fans. It will make all of my partners more successful. But more importantly, I think it will improve the lives because I do.

believe the tabletop games improve lives. So like I that is the job as facilitating those communities. I like the way you said that that is yeah. All right that that feels like a pretty good place to then start to wrap it up with where do people go to find these incredible games and to these incredible communities. Game found come but go ahead. For me being publisher agnostic I would say that every publisher will tell you that they should go to game found when they're on game found but if If you were curious about tabletop games for Lord of the Rings or anything, there's a lot of local game stores you can go to. But if you're looking for a great Lord of the Rings ascension game,

there's only one place. When? When is your campaign launch? July 14th. And if you follow the campaign before it launched, there's a special bonus for you. So as this airs, you have the opportunity to come join and come be a part of it. And yeah,

it's going to be very exciting. We have tons of fun stuff to reveal. It is, yeah, it's, I said, I've larked on a lot of cool things, But this is the coolest thing I've ever worked on and I can't wait to share it. And I am eternally grateful to you, Luke. I could say without a doubt, it would not have happened without you making this connection and creating this space and doing what you do.

So I've been grateful for our friendship for many years. This is just one of the coolest, latest benefits I've gotten to have and the world will get to have to see this game come to life. And if anyone has any questions for you, they can meet you at San Diego Comic-Con. That's right. That's right. Come to San Diego Comic-Con. Come see Luke and I.

come see an early version of the game and ask us questions and come chat because we love chatting about games if you haven't figured it out by now. Happy to have those conversations. So Luke, thank you for taking the time and I will see you in a couple weeks in San Diego. Yep. Thanks. Game design is a craft and like any craft, it gets better with structure, feedback, and repetition. You're able to learn better when you're surrounded by like-minded people who support each other and lift each other up. The think like a game designer design lab is designed to give you all of that.

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