Think Like A Game Designer - Ross Thompson—Real-World Marketing, Influencer Strategy, and Building Community That Lasts (#102)

Episode Date: April 23, 2026

Ross Thompson is a marketing strategist focused on helping tabletop games and consumer brands grow through real-world connection. A veteran of the industry with over 15 years of experience in community building, events, and marketing, he most recently served as Director of Marketing at Atomic Mass Games, where he worked on titles like Star Wars: Legion, Marvel Crisis Protocol, and Star Wars: Shatterpoint. He now serves as Media and Events Director on the board at GAMA, focusing on strengthening the industry through better events and stronger connections between creators, retailers, and players. In this episode, Ross shares practical strategies for building real-world communities, working with influencers more effectively, and finding the right retail partners to support long-term growth.If you’ve ever had a game idea but didn’t know how to turn it into a real, playable design, my Design Labs program walks you through the entire process. With 60+ lessons, practical assignments, and a private Discord community, you’ll learn how to move from inspiration to prototype, playtesting, iteration, and publishing. 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.

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that I have created and tested with dozens of other creators and other aspiring designers. that includes over 60 lessons 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 designing games with intention,

check out the Think Like a Game Designer Design Lab at justingarydesigns.com. In today's episode, I speak with Ross Thompson. Ross is a veteran in the tabletop industry with over 15 years of experience in community building, event leadership, and marketing. He most recently served as director of marketing at Atomic Mass Games, where he helped bring iconic licensed titles like Star Wars Legion, Marvel Crisis Protocol, and Shatterpoint to life for fans around the world. After an exciting run there, Ross stepped into a new chapter earlier this year, and he's now serving as the media and events director on the board at Gamma, the Tabletop Game Association, advocating for the industry and supporting events that bring our community together.

I've known Ross for many years, and he is someone who walks the walk. He's a passionate hobbyist, painting minis, hitting conventions, even started his own convention. And we talk all about how to build events, how to build marketing, how to think about marketing in the modern era for the tabletop game industry, and how to be able to potentially even create your own events, create your own presence, and what does it mean whether you're a small company, big company, solo designer, solo creator, or even someone who just wants to have more of an impact in the world around you. Ross is a great human being and someone who has connected me to countless others. We also go into some of the resources Ross has created for creating tabletop game growth around the industry and around the world, including a jobs posting link, which I highly

recommend for those looking to get into the industry. So all of that and more is in this episode. So I will wrap up this intro. And without any further ado, here is Ross Thompson. And welcome. I am here with Russ Thompson. Russ, so great to have you here, man. Hey, it's good to be here. Thanks for having me on.

Yeah, man. So we've been friends for many, many years. And I have seen you bounce around the industry and have an amazing impact. I've even secretly tried to recruit you a few times myself. And so it's great to get to share your wisdom with the crowd. And, you know, I want to kind of start. I'll get to your origin story a little bit because I don't know if I know your full background, but I've always thought of you as kind of a super connector in a ways that you have built

relationships across the industry. You've organized networking events. You've organized communities, including the Tabletop Games Jobs Board, which is tens of thousands of people that want to get into the industry. You've organized get-togethers with people who are industry veterans. I love this as a superpower. I think it's one of the most important. things and one of the reasons I love tabletop games in general is like connecting people. How did you get, have you always been this way? Like what's motivated you to kind of do that? Because it's a lot of work. It's not necessarily an easy thing. Does this come naturally to you? Talk to me about how you got into this.

That's a, that's a, thanks for bringing that up. It's, I just like bringing people together. I think it's very fun. I think one of the things, we don't have a lot of onboarding in the tabletop game space. I mean, you've been every component of, hey, you got to go out and learn what you're doing and everything there. And then finding mentors. And this podcast, in particular, I use all the time to be like, hey, go listen to these things and do all of that. But at the same time, like, it's tough to find, hey, I want to do this thing. And in the tabletop space in general, I think we're one of the few industries where everyone is very happy to share information and you're very happy to do that kind of stuff. So, but it does take somebody to take that step to, hey, let's all do this thing and get that going.

So, I mean, I used to throw a lot of fun parties in high school, like marching band and stuff like that and everything. there. So, like, getting people together wasn't all of that. And I ran a convention for like 10 years too. And that was pretty much because, like, my friends moved to away for college and I wanted to get them back so that we could keep playing games. So when I made the industry jump to start doing some of those things, I already had a lot of the information like the jobs group started as an Excel sheet. You know, and then Jessica Fisher was like, we should do a Facebook group for that. And I'm like, oh, that'd be a lot easier. So then I started posting them in the Facebook group instead of in the Excel sheet stuff. and then a lot of the networking stuff

which is kind of a, it makes it easier. Like I run the big party at Comic-Con about 400 people now. I book out a whole brewery on Thursday. And that just started because I was inviting people that were on the panels that I was running. And then it was like,

we need a bigger space to host everything. So now I have to run a party because that's just how it is to find space downtown. Right. So. Yep. Yeah, I just enjoy doing it. I mean, we also have a,

like, I've been in the space now for about 17 years. which is wild to even think about, right? And that's a few eras of generational people that have come in. And there's new folk coming in all the time. So I think the more that we can get kind of that cross information sharing is cool. Yeah. So I want to let's let's tease this apart. So one, you know, you've kind of been doing this to some extent your whole life.

And there's a natural, you know, affinity for it. But for the the details on the on two separate sides, right? So one, I just want to linger for a minute on this tabletop James Jobs group because it's for anybody out there that does not have a job of the tabletop industry or is looking to hire people of the tabletop industry. It's a great resource. It's free. It's available on Facebook.

So that's just a great thing that you've done, a service to the community. So there's building online communities like that. And then there's building like physical communities and presence at events like Comic-Con or, you know, Gamma will talk about as well. Like, what would you say is the key to, you know, doing that stuff successfully? or is there anything that you would say for somebody else out there that want to say, oh, well, that's great. I'm a social person.

I like to get people together. Like, how do I get started? What would be a good way to approach it? And you could take either side of it. Yeah, let's do the in-person stuff first. So I think when doing that, it was a way of, like, there are, we're conventions, right? Everybody is there and it's, oh, my gosh, do I want to do a dinner? We should go into this thing and all of that.

And so I think one of the things that kind of got me into that was, well, if I can create a space that like that we're hosting and all of that then we can kind of keep the narrative going um like i'm i'm almost six years sober now right and so um which is amusing that i host a together at a brewery we'll get into that um but it's uh it's one of those things where it's like hey for a long time coming in like at gamma and other shows a lot of the industry things were to bar right it's like hey we're going to hang out oh the bar's going to be covered and then whatever there but if if we'll be coming with intent of being like, hey, we're going to hang out, we're going to get together, we're going to talk about

these things, especially in person. It's kind of a fun way to do that. And with so many different tracks we have in this space, whether it's retailers or distributors or publishers or creators, knowing what that focus is, is good. And we've got so many folk that are trying to get into the tabletop game space now that if somebody wants to put it get together and get it going, I recommend going for it. Right. Like people are always looking for more stuff. And especially it's like discoverability is very difficult right now. Our online spaces with Twitter kind of getting really weird and TikTok making it stuff and Blue Sky is doing that.

But how do you find somebody new that could be doing a really cool thing you're doing? Oh, I don't really know. Hey, we're going to have a miniatures designers get together at an Epiccon. Come hang out at this time. We're going to have some publishers there, do all that. And now you've got a way to do that. Obviously on a publisher's end, you know, we're going to host an early preview for some cards or some minis or things there, but that's more structured.

So I think if people want to do that kind of stuff, definitely go for it. And the cool thing is you don't have to do it around a convention either. I mean, Seattle, San Diego, St. Louis, Vegas, you know, Philadelphia and New York, those are a lot of cool hubs for industry folk too. I know Mary Cousin, who runs people to play, she's been doing little get-togethers around the country, which you can organize, they get organized to the Toy Association. So I wanted to start doing as camera, just saying if we can do some of these things like that.

Obviously, that's a down the road thing. But I think within the gaming industry, those kind of in-person things are a lot. We can only see so much from someone's online persona and how they engage. So getting able to hang out is nice. Yeah, okay. So there's a lot to unpack there.

I'm going to try to parse a few lessons that I heard that I think are universalizable. and then a few that maybe maybe that people can we could talk about a little bit more. So one, right, there's a, you know, going to where the people are and finding a space to that, right? So conventions are an easy thing and I always recommend, right?

We've talked a lot about gamma and we'll talk more about it where, you know, this is for, as the time we're recording this, next, we're both headed there next week. You're on the gamma board as a few months ago. So you're very deeply involved in that. That's a great like industry, tabletop game industry inside. event, right? It's all people that are, you know, retailers, distributors, stores. So if you're looking to be in the space, they're not a consumer show at all. Other events like Gen Con or Comic-Con, which are also heavily involved in are ones that have more consumer presence.

But as you said, you know, major cities, you know, where there's events, you know, running events in major cities where there's hubs is also great. So finding, you know, finding a spot, you know, if there's something real where you are, where you are or traveling to one of these locations make sense. I think there's also the, you know, something I heard you say that I think is really important to emphasize. And I've actually really been doubling down on this lately is the, you know, the online communities are so crowded right now.

It's so noisy. It's so hard to break through that I think the world is going to be trending more towards just the old school. Like, let's be in the same place. Like there's no way to build a better real connection. in life. There's no way to build actual meaningful feedback and interaction with people. And so there's a higher barrier, right?

Because it takes more work. You have to be in a place. You have to set up the space. You have to create the environment, invite people, get people to show up. But in fact, that is a plus, not a negative because it's not just this like what is now a bot infested universe on Twitter. Oh, yeah. So then let's, when it comes to actually, structuring these events. The third thing I think I heard you say is like,

you know, you kind of want to have a purpose, right, a kind of specific agenda. Like, why are you coming to this thing? Like, what's the goal?

And then you want there to be something ideally kind of to do or something to draw people in, right? Whereas sometimes that's alcohol, but now maybe that's, you know, that's a little played out. And,

and so what, what do you think about building a structured intention? How do you think about building events that are not just around? drinking and things. And let me just put this out there as well as for my side, right? Like I've, you know, I've watched your journey over the years and we've known each other long enough that we have, you know, gotten really drunk together and then to see you evolve into this space. And I myself, since, you know, for the last four, three months now, I've had, I haven't had any alcohol, really. I mean, I think I had one drink total. So it's a, it's a,

it's something I've worked on. I don't know whether it's something I don't want in my life at all, but it is something that I have found that my default to using that as a socialization tool is not something I like, right? I want it to be, as I've gotten older, the consequences of alcohol have gone up and the joy has gone down. So I just want to experiment with that. And so I think you're a great person and I think it's great to get to share that message. So what is it, you know, so maybe, yeah, what does it like to build events and socialize that without leaning on that as a crutch or how has it impacted your, you're thinking around these things? Yeah. So, it, It's with the Comic-Con one as a good example, right?

Like, so that got started because everybody, you know, Comic-Con, it's like a big nerdy garage, right? So it takes over the whole city and everything there. And I would always put together a big handful of panels and then there'd be other industry folk around. And it's like, hey, Ross, we should all hang out what's going on. And so the intent behind that event is it's a tabletop industry gathering and it's on the Thursday. I have it as early as we possibly can without going over preview night.

That were the people that can meet there, can know who's going to be at the show. They have a chance to set up another meeting if they'd like, or they can just hang out. Right. Because if we have it on a Saturday night, at that point, we're already fried from the show. Oh, my gosh, we can't meet on Sunday. And you're going to forget to exchange information or anything there. But if you have it on the Thursday, hey, you've had the first day of the show. Cool.

We kind of get those initial. The booth is running. You've had our panel or two. Now we can kick off and we are in gear, right? And so that's really nice. Having it at a brewery is cool because the ballast point little illy that we do it at, it's like 10 minutes Uber away with a little bit of traffic in there. So it's disconnected from the swirl of downtown.

So if you're there, you are present and you are there. You're not trying to go off for the next party, do the whole thing and all of that. And then it is a gathering where I am hosting. So you walk in, oh my gosh, thank you for being here. Yes, you're signed on, check. And then, you know, oh my gosh, how you've been? What's going on? Anybody you're trying to meet?

And I'll help with that with that. That way that it's a gathered structure there. Then Ballast Point also has some really nice non-acophobic stuff. They've got like a ginger, pineapple thing that's super nice and everything there. So I make sure that that's on that. And then we have food because, you know, you got to eat a little bit of food if we're going to have it like seven to ten. But then it's a, hey, we're going to hang out and gather. And so in the description, I've got, this is,

for gathering, this is for connecting, this is for meeting, meeting folk. There's none of this like, hey, there's no drink tickets. You're not being forced these things. While a sponsor covers the first, you know, $1,000 on the tab, that's just because people are going to go and grab their stuff. But after that, it's definitely a, hey, we're running this thing. Then halfway through, I'll have back on the mic. Thank you for all being here. It's so great to see you. I'm glad we can do this. You know, if you're looking for anything, let me help you out. There we go. And That way it's a nice, it's structured, it has its point, but it's definitely because of the messaging going on. It's a gathering at that.

Right. So what I think is very different than after hours at a convention, you're all meeting at the bar. Hey, you know, there's always, oh, we're going to go to that one bar. We're all there. Packs unplugged. That circle bar is like a really great place to meet now. But now it's so packed that when you're there, it's almost louder inside that bar than it is at an event. And then for those that don't drink anymore, after about 1130, everybody else is so splashed.

You're like, cool, I'm going to be in bed by 1145. What a great evening I'm going to have with some sleep, right? Which is, there's no judgment there. But it's the saying it's, that's been a funny thing to notice it shows, which we can cover later too. But yeah, so like with those kind of events that I'm running, I try to keep them structured that way that we do that. I've run another ones with some other companies. And it's been that same vibe. He'd be at about three hours, do it as hangout, do a whole thing.

And then you're good. Yeah. So I think that's that. So again, just going to try to distill what I hear is like the kind of universal principles for success here. Because you clearly are doing a lot of things right. Right. So it's a, you know, the filtering of the specific people up front,

being clear in the invitation what the point of the, what's the purpose of this is. I think the personal touch and, you know, greeting people and welcoming people directly makes a big difference, right? you just, you set the tone, you clearly are in charge of the environment and, and help it to bring that together. Are they giving people the option, you know, for people that want to drink, they drink, for people that don't, they don't.

They're not forced into it as you would feel like, you know, I have a, you know, if I have a, you know, if I have a, you know, if I have an open bar, I feel like I'm leaving money on the table if I'm not drinking, you know, it's a weird, it's a weird, it's a weird gamer instinct to buy that I have. No, totally. Yeah, yeah, it's, yeah. It's for that, that at first thousand bucks, you know, it'll get blown through in about an hour. And then, like, no one just like, like, it's like,

Yeah. Yeah. And then and then yeah, I think it's really also interesting thinking about the timing of when you when you host the event and you know the beginning of a of a long weekend or at the end or you know what kinds of things people are going to be more likely to do. And so I think I think knowing, yeah, knowing the timing, knowing the size of the event, knowing the structure and purpose of it. Do you do any follow up afterwards? Is there like a, you know, is there any structured process to that? So it's I do it through evently year. whatever, like the one that's based through text, right? So I'll shoot out a text at the beginning, like about a week before and then I a couple days after. I just started picking up sponsors for this thing because it became a little pricey. So, you know, those things, and I think I have to get money and all of that there when it makes that jump, right? So I'll do a couple of promotions.

But hey, thank you to our sponsors for this thing there. Go check out their Kickstarter. We had sponsors the last two years, right? And so it just been good. And then I try to make sure that, go ahead. Yeah, that's interesting to me also. So, so, you know, and again, like for those that are listening that, you know, I do think I am speaking specifically to the importance of, you know, running things, you know, professional level events at conventions and that your hometown and being able to gather together. But this same stuff applies whether you're setting up a playtest with friends, whether you're doing a party, whether you're trying to gather and make friendships around your home or, you know, help build a local community.

All of these principles are universal, which is why. I'm so interested in them. But I'm also interested in this idea of like getting sponsors, right? It's a shift really from saying, hey, I'm hosting, I'm paying for everything. I'm setting this up to the, okay,

now I need to bring in somebody else who's going to pay for a sum of or all of or maybe even you make a profit off of some of these kinds of events potentially. What does that process look like? Yeah, sounds nice. Hey. Yeah. So it's,

it's funny, right? So like I ran a con for 10 years here in San Diego, right? And that was a, we'd bring it sponsors to do stuff. We had vendors and all of that. And that's where I learned a lot of that.

Hey, you want to be at the door when we're coming in and everything there? But even then, like our sponsors for doing it, it helped cover certain parts of it, not the whole thing. And so with the party, I had initially I was, oh, I needed to sponsors. And there were some companies like, hey, I want to come in. I want to pay for the whole thing. And then I want to do all this stuff. And I'm like, hey, that's actually not what this gathering is about. This is much more people that are going to be speaking with panels and they're going to be content creators.

It's going to be the other exhibitors. But I would love to have a few. sponsors to help cover some of these things and then we can promote your game i've got a whole area of the of the brewery now we can have your game set up we can do handouts at the beginning i can do a text at the beginning uh before the thing we can do a text at the end or if he has something else you want to do um so that but then i got to i meet with them beforehand hey so that you understand here's what the here's what the party is there's not just like a you can come in and just buy buy it that's not what's going on we've nurtured a really cool community here.

And I've had a lot of people say that they look forward to that every year, which is very humbling and, you know, nice to hear because it does take a lot of work. But at the same time, like, it does cost money. And so, you know, my dad always jokes, you should make money on this thing. And I'm like, I just don't want to lose any money. That's kind of my kind of my thing on that. Because if I wanted to make money, I bet I could probably turn this into a whole thing. But that's not what I want to do.

Yeah. Well, and that, yeah, it's, it's always a really interesting thing, like this process of, you know, what you decide to make professional, what, what, when money's a motivator, when it versus when it's something that you really want to do in general. And I think these kinds of things like, you know, even like this podcast, right? I don't make any money off this podcast. I just do it because I love it and I love to have these kinds of conversations and I like to help people. But also it has like a lot of natural positive effects, right? It helps grow my brand. It helps attract me, you know, me to have conversations with people that either a deeper dive conversation. and then we might have otherwise, or a conversation with people I would never have otherwise. And so there's these knock-on effects of positive value that I get from it, even though it's not something I'm doing for money or just to get stuff. And so I think that this gatherings and these things like that are like that for you, right? You have such a deep network of contacts and people that are genuine relationships you built

because you put in the work to build those relationships and create the space where those relationships conform. I would agree, right? Like it's something I enjoy too and too, so it's not like I'm like trying to capitalize on it. But it is nice that I can make these bases and do these things. And then, hey, Ross, I need help finding a person that can do manufacturing for this. Or, hey, I need a really cool designer. Do you know somebody? Or hey, I need an artist that can do this thing.

I'm like, oh, yeah, totally. I'm happy to help out with all of those things there, which is great. And then for the main party, obviously, it's a good thing to do. Also, it kind of helps me because like for comic as an example. I do a lot of panels. I do the RPG play theater. We're doing a lot more of these tabletop designer tracks and pitch things. And so being able to have a party that's like outside of the structured Comic-Con stuff that can be like, hey, it's great that you're pitching your game and doing your thing. You should come into this gathering too. You're going to meet a lot of folk there

and that'll be a fun, nice casual hang out. Right. Yeah. Yeah. No, that's great. And so, so, okay, so let's let's use that as a as a jumping off point here because, you know, we've we've talked about a lot of what goes into a successful frame. We've talked a little bit about the, you know, the idea of like, you know, when you're doing a sponsor, there's a tradeoff of, you know, the value that the sponsor wants to get out of it versus maintaining the integrity of the event and ensuring that those things are aligned. When it comes to crafting community, which, you know, as you said,

one of the great things about the tabletop industry, one of the reasons why I'm in this industry is because people are genuinely, like, friendly and helpful. And we're all happy to share information and kind of lift each other up in a way that is just not the case in a lot of other industries. And so now that you're a member of the board of Gamma, which is the sort of game manufacturers association, supposed to be very much,

that's the whole point of it, right, is to help build this community officially, to help support people in all different sides of the industry. What do you view as like your role there? How do you view the way, you know, things that, whether, whatever, people can get out of Gamma today and maybe where you'd want to see it go to serve the industry better going forward? Sure, great question, right?

So as we discussed, I've been around for a long time. I've seen Gamma evolve from when it used to be at Bally's to where it is now, it's last year in Louisville, and then it'll be in Baltimore going forward. Yeah, I see you smile on there. So like, it used to be, I used to go over to March Madness and stay at the Mirage for college pet band and then literally, you know, change my bag and then go over to valleys to do all this stuff when I was working with, we get like private compressing cool money or not. So it's been kind of fun to watch that.

I had a lot more fun at Gamma when it was. in Vegas, but it was a lot less actually useful as a show. I mean, that's the thing. It's changed so much since I was going. It's just like a marketing manager to now on this end of it, right? And so what's cool is that the game has got two big things going for. One is the organization and then one is the expo. Right.

And so the organization itself, there's the different tracks for publishers and for retailers and for distributors and creators and media and events. and there's different things in there. The main thing you get by joining is getting access to the membership directory, which gives you emails for everybody out there, which on a professional level, instead of just going on social media

and shooting your shot to hope somebody sees it at the right time, which discoverability, as we discussed, is way down. So that's the right person at the moment has to see it. Instead, being a part of that directory is great. And then there's a couple different gamma online groups from their Facebook group

and their Discord, which are pretty much kind of like the industry water coolers, right? Like you're going to get publishers yelling at gamma, retailers yelling at publishers. It's all good stuff. And then there's Expo, right? And then for Tabletop, we don't really have a lot of trade-only shows. Obviously, a lot of the distributors host their own shows where they invite retailers out to showcase and see the new stuff. But Expo is the only one where everyone's there.

Obviously, GenCon has its stuff going on too, but it's paired up with the biggest consumer show in the U.S. So being able to go to Expo and just being like, hey, we've got a few days of panels and presentations and game nights. And then we've got a few days of Expo Hall and game nights. So that works out really well. So what we've seen recently, this what I've been seeing is especially on this end of now as a board member since August or October, is that you've got brand new folk that are coming in. Hey, I've got a new business. I've got a new thing. What do I get out of this?

How do I do it? And then you've got a lot of the vets who've been around for a long time being like, cool. During it for Expo, I've got a presentation. I'm going to go to these meetings. I'm going to see these people reaffirm a lot of these connections that we'll see throughout the year. But at Expo, the energy is different because we're all there to discuss business. And there's no extra, like we don't have to be on for consumers, where it would for a GenCon or a spiel. Because while we're excited to have those trade meetings, if we see some fans or we got to go do a selling at a booth, we can do that.

So I think with Expo, you also brought up like, what am I excited for? And so, like, as a board member now, I'm getting ready to launch a survey for a media and events division. And I want to know how else can I improve the benefits for media members and for event members? You've got a lot of folk that have either been coming around for a long time with running their TikTok channels or their blog channels. They know they can talk to publishers and do these things. What else can Gamma offer?

Like, I'm hoping to get some mentorship programs in there. I'm hoping to get a better streamlined communication between publishers and media. And then also, I would love to get more of the content creators that aren't part of Gamma. And I do my best to do outreach to people that are on the MagicCon circuit or miniatures guys. They have huge YouTube or RPG creators that are doing all these things. And I'll see them post online and like, oh, I need sponsors for my Twitch stream giveaway. And it's like, well, you have to hope that the right marketing manager at the right time is seeing your Instagram story, you know. And it's like, well, if you just joined Gamma for like 300 bucks, now you can post in there and get all these things and do all this content and be this professional organization, which is really nice.

Yeah, yeah. And so the posting, is this posting in the gamma like a Facebook group or in their on their website forums or what do you recommend for people to get the most value? Yeah. So it's a bit of both, right? So I think if you're, let's say you and I ran a really cool YouTube channel, right? And we do regular streaming and we do stuff for trading card games, right? Like I think being able to, hello, we are this channel. Here's our views.

We can post it in the game of Facebook group or in the Discord. And we're gearing up for a big event. We're going to be doing card game preview bonanza, right? And we would love some sponsors. Like that way that then companies that we know we want to reach out to, maybe some sleeve companies or some other publishers, they could hand us, they'll break this, get in contact. Or if not, there could be new companies.

We hadn't thought of that are doing that there. And then at the other time, just having the publisher directory, hey, making sure I have my contacts with sleeve companies, publisher companies, accessory companies, doing all these things. I think that's really good because now because of discoverability being down, right? I think one of the best things I'm seeing is as a marketing manager or marketing whatever role I've been at companies, I'll go make sure that my favorite

or preferred channels are sending me emails. Because like Rodney Smith, man, that guy's hit me up once a month with his general publisher, B2B email being like, hey, I've got my new videos, we've got these new things. I have some slots opening up. You should hit me up. So now instead of me having to be like, oh, crap, I got to return to Rodney to get a video, I'm already getting his email letting me know when his openings are. Right.

And so I'd love for more content creators to be approaching it that way. That way that, you know, hey, they're hitting up all their clients. So then we know, oh, cool. If I got to book this person for a shout out or for a thing, I can just reach out versus having to like track down their info and do all this stuff, right? Yeah, yeah. So there's the logistics of like how people communicate and making sure that the right people can access the right partners and the right information at the right time,

which I think is a great service and a fundamental thing that, yeah, I agree. I'd love to see Gamma do more of and have more of a hub. for that sort of thing and have that be communicated better. People be more aware of those assets. But let's zoom out a little bit more broadly and talk about, you know, this exact marketing puzzle, right? This exact content and, you know, content and events, media and events being a part of it.

But, you know, we started to talk about this, you know, we've alluded to this multiple times throughout the conversation already. But it's the biggest challenge in the entirety of the game industry, I think, which is this, you know, discoverability and how can you, you know, find, create content that people want to watch or successfully partner with partners who either have channels that are successful, but also that are going to be successful partnership for you, right? I mean, I've done plenty of these deals where somebody had a lot of viewers and they showed off our product and we got nothing out of it, right? And I've partnered with small creators where we got massive conversions. And I've, you know, so there's,

but it's very, I personally have not broken this formula. I think that there is a lot of challenges and it's very, very hard. So I want you to solve this problem for me. Or at the very least, give me some insights in how we should think about it. Both, you know, for me as a, you know, you can use me as a stoneblade as an example. We can use, you know, somebody else out there that's starting out. You know, I've got another big scale project. We just announced with Bandai for Gundam Assemble, which is obviously a bigger,

bigger budget, bigger promotion item. So there's different things, different scales. You can attack this anywhere you want. But man, oh man, is it the number one question I get both inside my team and outside in terms of how to succeed in this space? Yeah, it's, I mean, that's, as you brought up, like, that's the question, right? Like, and how are we going to come out in a way that makes sense? And so I try to break up my content creator channels by different divisions, right?

And it's like, what kind of content are they making? How big is their audience and what platform are they on? right and obviously you want a certain level of quality of content hey is their audio good is your visual stuff good what's going on there and then you can look at their community and be like well how does their community engaging are they are they just in the comments of like their youtube video or do they run a discord where they're doing giveaways or do these people go to shows are they a part of the larger community or are they kind of like like an own little island fiefdom thing and then once you kind of know that then you can come out there and be like cool we can figure out these different activations that we can

do I love a big, hey, we've got everyone together. We're going to do a big tick off. We're going to do these things. And whether you have the budget to fly everybody out or you go to a hub where everybody is. So like most recently, I was doing some stuff freelance for a crowdfunding campaign. And they had just gotten in a couple of their physical copies of the stuff. And they're like, hey, we need to get this out to reviewers. What do we do? And I'm like, well, let's have the designer come out to L.A. I'll go up there and then we can book a place and then just bring a bunch of content creators in. We can play the game.

We can film content. We can talk about this stuff. This would be really fun. So we got about 8 to 10 content creators with a mix of big numbers to good community support and stuff there. We paid him a decent amount for the day and the ask was film short form content,

which then you can post on launch day and then throughout the campaign. We were not asking a specific, you need to post X number of times and do these things, but hey, get a couple cool things, do a nice video. We'll have the designer right there. And we did that. We covered food.

The place we did it at, it was one of their first times doing that. They host a lot of game nights in L.A., so they have a really cool two-table setup. But that way, like, it kind of helped set this bar for, hey, here's what we can do. We can go from there. And having that kind of in-person stuff is good. But at the same time, that only covers one event. now you only got that content stuff. What do you do as well?

And so the other pullback moment is going, what kind of content do you want to have? Do you want to have education content or entertainment content? And that's been a big thing I've been trying to like grow out and expand more for my marketing strategy is I think education content. There are certain channels where that stuff lives and breeze. Rodney Smith is a great example, right? Rebecca Scott's for her how to plays.

They are a beacon for you want to want how to play. game, they're making it, you know, you can go there. But at the same time, they aren't doing wacky, fun play, hey, we're going to play Gloom Haven for 24 hours straight and see if we're still alive at the end of the live stream kind of stuff, right? And so knowing that you've got this nice mix of, hey, I can go here for education and here for entertainment is really good. As a publisher, we should be the core source of where that knowledge is. With all the SEO search, everybody's searching for stuff on chat GPT now. And then just in general,

like knowing that our website's going to be the home place where that stuff lives is great. But then all the fun content, hey, we're going to do card previews with these people here or a miniature painting thing over there. That's fine, whether it's on Twitch or Instagram Reels or some of those things. So I think if you can have a nice mix of that style of content,

you've hit your stuff. But then at the same time, knowing your marketing narrative that you're sharing with that strategy is key. So I try to make my own tent polls when doing a marketing campaign when you're getting ready for free announcement stuff, pre-order, launch, duration,

and then ending stuff there. And that way you've made your own beats, which then you can keep people to. And then as long as you've shared that with the influencers you're working with, they can get excited in their own way too. And then if they're part of the conversation, it's not as transactional.

Right? Like obviously, hey, we're going to pay you for this thing and do all of that. But the more content you can do where it's genuine, it's genuine. Yeah. So I strongly agree with that. I think, you know, again, the difference I found between the influencers where the conversion has been real for us and we've seen some real impact and not is like the influencer is also a genuine fan of the product. Like they actually like it and, you know, want to play it as opposed to I was clearly paid to play this and just everybody can feel that and read that. But I would love to get, I want to get a little bit more concrete because I love, you know, this idea, you know, you threw out a lot of things that all sound good, right? We want to, you know, schedule these events, get educational content, get entertainment content, know, the different types of content that are there, find ways to bring in these different influencers lists of people who, you know, based on the categories, things they content. And then you talked about, but, but you sort of answered the question a little bit that I already had in my head, which is like, that feels like a lot. And it feels like kind of a little bit of a spray and prey kind of strategy. But then you said, no, no, there's brand pillars, right? There's these ideas, these messaging pillars that I'm going to build around. What does that mean?

And what does like, can you, ideally with a concrete example, either for a project you've worked on or, you know, pick a, you know, pick a, you know, pick a cent, you know, pick a cent, you know, pick a cent. I was just at Atomic Mass Games for the last two years, right? Yeah. And I love working there. Great team, awesome stuff. And we continued to work for Star Wars and Marvel, good times.

Right. And we came out with like 1208 products over the last. like, you know, 18 months or so. That's a lot of stuff. I didn't have a massive marketing team. And so we had to combine stuff into these 10-4 projects, right? And so, hey, we're going to, we get X-Pen that are grouped up. We've got Rogue One characters that are grouped up.

We've got these things that are grouped up. We know when the pre-order announcement for consumers is going to be. We know what the pre-order announcement for retailers is going to be and everything there. And so knowing which content needs to be shared in those pillars is huge, right? we're announcing the retailer pre-order stuff. We know the retailers need to know where to go. We know that the consumers need to be excited just enough to be asking the retailer, hey, when are you going to put in your pre-order?

Right. And then we have to go, okay, do those retailers, do they need in-store posters or do they just need digital assets for their social media pages? Do they need an email reminder? Have I got the messaging stuff set up for the distributor that is going to be bringing it up there? do I need to go buy a magazine page on good or job I'll say Gtm but RAPGTM yeah magazines a lot of the previous magazine channels are not quite the real yeah yeah we can get to that but yeah but like kind of those things there right and so okay but those those are those are specific

like dates and events that are you're you're building around and then and then you said okay yeah do I need posters do I need you know digitalize that so how do you answer that question how do you know right well So part of it comes down to is knowing which products are going to be key, right? We all have the ABC product. Core products are always going to get that kind of stuff, right? Ascension core box, boom, or the refreshed version or whatever, your 2026. Yeah. This is the new.

I want people to buy this thing. That's what stores me, right? For every little tiny expansion, probably not, right? But your core pillar, this is a core pillar product. Man, where's your window cling? Where's your this? Where's your asset package that I could send to any press people? or influencers, they can pull the P&Gs, get the logos, do all that.

And then when we're talking about it in interviews, or we're having influencers play it, or we're going to be at a convention, that's the core stuff there, right? And then knowing when that window is going to be from our pre-order all the way to, hey, when's that next launch going to be of stuff, but then you're going to sprinkle in your expansions. There's going to be an upgrade for the cultists,

or upgrade for these things. We're trying to pull my stuff on that right. No, yeah, yeah, you're doing great. So, okay, so there's a calendar of like key events and key beats that are going to happen throughout the calendar, throughout the calendar year. So that's both product, release dates, pre-release dates. You know your order dates. There's a some budget of stuff that you're going to provide. So some of that is digital assets, which is cheap to create and you can distribute freely, including information about the product, visuals, etc.

Some of that is physical stuff that you might send to stores. some of that is events that you're going to create that will bring people together either online for a reveal or a Q&A or in-person for a influencer event or on somebody else's channel. And based on the total amount of products and maybe the total budget you have, you just, you kind of just use your gut to allocate those things, like how those work. So for in-person, for the store stuff, that was your question. I was like, I had into for the store things. That's when you're hanging out with the sales team and hanging.

it with your distributor guys and you're being like how many stores are actively buying our stuff and then of those stores how many are like actively doing the reorders and everything there obviously i can't share super numbers on a thing for that but like distributors and sales reps know which stores are actively buying your product and doing all those there and at the same point there's really only like 30 40 shops in the whole of the u.s that are really doing the numbers that we want to be involved with and so being able to be a part of those things and do that is really fun. But then at the same time, pulling back a little bit,

within those marketing beats, your speed and your frequency in which you engage with those beats gears up for the final announcement moment, right? Obviously, six months out, we've announced, we've been a little, a few teasers, we've dropped some cool art, we've done some little playthrus. What that is, we're gearing up for that, like, two weeks before announcement.

It's like Candy Crush, baby. You know, it's like how many cool little things can be pop in, hey, we're going to have our live stream schedule this week. We're going to do an Instagram live takeover on this thing. Oh, we're going to do a cool card preview this and then be a part of the giveaway and we've shared out keys on these things. And that's where that excitement content comes into play. And then once it's out, boom, stores have it.

They're going to be playing it. Did you go? And then it's all your capture content from that, right? Are you doing your spotlights? Are you doing your recaps? Are you doing all of those things? And all of that, you've got a monitor too. And some of that stuff is the not fun work, right?

Because you got to go and track down, okay, which stores did this stuff? Did they work there? Am I talking to them? Now I got to write up these blogs and do these things. But if you've got a passionate team, right, some of those social media reels, you can capture and do some of that stuff. And that's stuff that like on the shorts and the reels and stuff, I've had to like retrain myself.

I love a good blog, man. Like if I can just go to blog and read it, and hit my beats and call it a day. But that's not that I'm old now, right? It's not totally old. Anybody that was to could go to Justagary Designs tosubstack.com and see my blog. And it's not done. I still love it.

I love log form content. I like still reading things and, you know, I record hour long podcasts. But I also hear you. I am also now working on trying to do more short form and trying to be more in that space, even though it's not my preference. It's me neither. Man, I can write a blog all day, but you tell me how to put together a 30-second reel in my brain to short circuits. But what I've been doing is finding the people that are good at that and then talking with them.

And man, there are some marketing people now that are so smart when it comes to doing these shorts and these reels and these things. And it is what's been cool is seeing content creators pass the veil and then become publisher marketing. and then how they're able to turn that from here's my community to here's the brand that I'm supporting. And some of these folk are doing such good content. And it's like, cool, I want those folk on my team so that we can figure out how to do that stuff, right? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And I think, I mean, it's really great.

And I hope people are, you know, are following a lot of this stuff. Because I think it's what I would kind of want, you know, so we have this, we're pretty good at this for crowdfunding, right? So we have a calendar template of the, you know, the beats we want to hit, of the people that we work with, of the messaging and how we want to get it out. We typically do two to three crowd funds a year. We're really good at getting the message out, activating our audience, bringing people in. I think we're pretty terrible at this on the retail side. And part of the reasoning is exactly the stuff that you talked about, which is like the not, the really like not fun grunty behind the scenes work.

That's like, because when I do crowd fund marketing, I can very readily tell. you how many link click-throughs I got to how many followers, to how much per revenue, you know, revenue was that turned into. So I can, as the gamer in me, loves that data. And I love to know what my score is. But when I do like, you know, this sort of more vague like awareness marketing or throw a poster at stores or, you know, whatever, like, I have no clue what's happening with it. Like I just, I just have to hope. So what, like, how are you converting that into, granular like data to know like yes this works we should keep doing it this didn't work if we'd done better or you we could do this better this way like how are you building that and funny funny enough

and this is like gamma hat on it's at every company I have worked at since I have been in the industry I get a premier presentation at gamma expo right and I'm like hey I'm going to hang out we're going to get this 45 minutes to an hour and I'm going to ask retailers a bunch of questions hello here's my slide with this kit, do you like this kit? Does this work for you? Right? And you're going to hear the same. We don't want our poster folded. We don't want these things, all of that. So like, weird things I've started doing is doing double-sided posters where one has the white box where you can write up your event night stuff. And the other one is just a full art with the logos that pops. It's like, it's that you can pick. Do you want to have a one that's just for the game night demo

or do you want to have a cool art of Asoka fighting Samandalorian dude? Right. So, and then it's calls for stores, right? And then asking the distributors to share that information to, hey, can you ask these stores, this question, doing some of these things. You're never going to have the full amount of survey stuff you want back. And then you're going to have some retailers who are wearing the same Iron Maiden t-shirts as high school, tell you their thoughts about some thing from 20 years ago that has no relevance now, but man, that's their moment that they are going to tell you what's going on.

but still that's still information that you can know right um i do a lot of store visits so when i traveled in new cities for a show or for a thing i try to take an hour or two out to go visit local stores i did that when i was in canada for canada plays um when i go out to different trade shows i'll try to take a couple hours and go to some stuff there i don't do it for like gen con and pack some club but if i'm going out for that kind of stuff like i was in a i Arizona for a store opening last october there were five hobby stores within like 10 miles and got to do that drive around and check up those shops and do those things. And they're all different and they were all busy on a Saturday.

And it's like, that's really informative. You know, like obviously they're in the desert and they've got a sea in these things, which is cool. Literally. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But like there's like, like Mox just opened up a brandy shop up there, right? So obviously, they did the market research and was like, okay, there's people gaming out here.

And this is Mox boarding house for for those that don't know, which is like the best game store, I think, in the country by far. They're the ones in Portland and Seattle I've been to and they're just like a concierge, you know, service for your game selection and really good food and drink. And it's like a place I could bring, you know, non-gamer friends and have them feel comfortable and come in. It's a really wonderful model. Absolutely, right. And so I think part of that is just the work, you know, and then also kind of trusting your gut a little bit. Hey, I can make this kit for X amount of money.

I'm going to make 100 of them or 200 of them. I'm going to ship them to these stores. And if I get a 75% engagement, they put up the poster for, you know, for a month, they handed up the rumble cards. And then I can send a survey afterwards. And if they majority fill it out, I feel like I have done my due diligence of send kit out. They take photos, send it back, tag us, and then fill out survey. But also none of that's new.

Like that's all just the wheel doing its thing. But it's people-powered marketing. and at the end of the day, like that's what the work is, right? Yeah. And you think that sort of stuff still works today, even in the TikTokification of product and stores. Absolutely.

I think we're going to see a huge rise in people going to play in game stores because I love playing at home with my buddies doing my thing. We have our own little hobby days. I book out an Airbnb once a year for us and we go hang out and do it the gaming day, which is great. But at the same time, like, man, I had some friends coming to town and we ended up playing at the game store the other day.

And it's fun because you want to go and be around that kind of stuff. But I think with this rise in TCGs we're seeing right now, too, right? Like people know that if they want to be a part of that draft night or that tournament night, they got to go to the shop, they got to do a thing. Or they got to be part of these clubs. Like most recently I've been working with this group called Ladies' D&D. They've been around for a year here in San Diego. they're a 900 person Discord and they're selling up monthly events with 80 to 110 people at venues all getting into D&D all in the last year. So like people obviously want to go and play games in person.

So that's pretty cool to see. Yeah. Well, I have a I'm working on a blog post for my substack about this. But I have a philosophy that as the, you know, kind of the rise of AI and the rise of this sort of online content. 10 plus and the rise of, you know, it being impossible to tell the difference between people and robots online that, you know, in-person interactions are going to, people are going to double down, that this ability to get together and have like physical gaming and connections and, you know, just the human interaction that is irreplaceable is going to become more and more valuable.

So I actually think our industry, whereas I, my bet would have been, you know, you roll back the clock 20 years and you're talking about, you know, the iPhone coming out and then, you know, iPad coming out and then all the cool technology, I would have thought for sure games, tabletop games were dead. I was like, this is just not going to last. There's no way. And it turned out to be the exact opposite. It's just been growing and people have been really clamoring for what is real. I think that's just going to become more and more of a big deal. So I think you're right to have that instinct of like instead of chasing, you know, don't, don't ignore the, the channels that are out there, right? You do need to, you know,

post some short form content and partner with people who are good at that. But I think this ability to like double down on the physical spaces in the communities that you can build and control yourself, either by organizing events as we started talking about or by supporting those stores, not just regular mom and pop tabletop game stores, which are great, but the ones that really invest in their communities, the ones that will invest in pushing games. Because it's been my experience that a lot of the stores that are out there are not what they used to be. Right. It used to be, back when I first launched Ascension 15 years ago, it was I could go to a place like Gamma. I could get the distributors excited about a project.

I showed the messages. They were excited about it. They would tell the stores and the stores would see it. Some of the stores would see it at Gamma. Then those, they would tell customers. And then that's how the game would spread. And now it's somewhat the opposite, right? It's fans have to discover the game first.

Then they tell their stores. Then the stores tell the distributors. And then they place orders. I don't know if you found that to be the case here. But it's like a very tricky. So that is exactly it. But also 15 years ago, there was maybe 2,000 games coming out a year, maybe, right?

And now we're at about 8,000 games coming out a year, right? And here we are on a Tuesday, and I'm sure your inbox this morning was loaded with a bunch of folk announcing their new crowdfunding campaigns on Kickstarter or game founder, backer kit or whatever, right? And so, like, every Tuesday we're getting hit up with those things. And then there's X amount of games that come out a year. Obviously, board game geek has their hotness list, and ICB2 tracks some stuff. But, like, it's hard to know what's coming out, and you and I are both plugged in, right?

Right. Right. And so it's tough that you've got this stuff going on. But at the same time, stores want to be a part of the cult of new, too. Right? And so if you can activate with that, do these launch events, doing these things, doing this stuff, it's good. But it does take the extra work because. So I had Chris O'Neill on a panel last year at Comic Con. And we were talking about how to get games on the store shelves. And he was saying, how it doesn't matter if your game has amazing art or it's well designed because every game now pretty much has great art. It's got a good designer. It's got these trusted things. It's got good packaging. It just takes that extra little bit of magic. And then luck to have the right person, see it at the right time,

share it out and do the whole thing. There's some, there's some Netflix just put Independence Day back on the algorithm, right? such a life fourth why is it up there it's so random but like man i live a dependents day i clicked it and i started watching it and i was like cool for some reason i just watched a dependency on a monday night why did i do that right um but the same kind of thing happens at like a game night somebody brings a game hey here's this thing check it out oh my gosh now we're playing it again you know like we were playing battles for galactica at a board game at a game at a couple weeks ago i guess my buddy pulled it out and we hadn't touched that game in like a decade right yeah but obviously

it has some modern things that I would love a ease of play upgrade. Oh, I would, yeah, I could complain about that game all day long. I mean, the heart of it is really cool, but the execution leaves a lot to be desired. But also back of the day, you know, we usually say it was one of the best license games that there was, right? And so. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, no, more than good enough for what it needed to be. Yeah, but like we were looking at it being like, oh, man, you could make so many tweaks now and streamline this thing to be great. but it's just funny how

even look if fantasy if I games was to release Battlestar Galatica today as is as a reprint I bet it would sell just fine you know because it's got good reviews it's got good things

oh my gosh how fun all of that and it's it's fascinating how in our space of new new new new new there's all these things that are working so like you know like when I brought up with somebody that I was going to be on an interview with you for Ascension

and she was like oh my gosh I love Ascension. I love playing it. And I'm like, oh, were you playing? And she goes, oh, she's digging on the app. And I'm like, oh, I should go get the in-person game. And she's like, oh, that'd be cool. I wonder how much different it is.

Right. Yeah. And it's like, well, it'll be different based on how many expansions she has an app. Right, right. Yeah, if you try to shuffle everything together all at once in the physical world, it's a lot harder. That's a lot harder than in the app. That's for sure. You know, but it's this funny because it's this, you know, like nothing beats getting

together with friends of playing games. You know, you're playing commander last weekend with some buddies in town and it was just a blast. You know? Yeah. That's special. Yeah. Yeah, it is.

It is. And so, you know, there's just been so many great insights on this. And I want to speak a little bit to the to how you budget for these things, right? Sure. Because we've talked a lot about the strategy. We've talked about how you, you know, identify, you know, partners would be they influencers or stores or, you know, whoever to work with. We've talked about how to create spaces.

We've talked about the different types of marketing materials that you can create digitally and physically to promote a product and the calendar and how you build kind of tent pole events around it. But when you're launching something new, obviously there's some companies that just have, you know, like a bunch of budget, but, you know, for most of us that are, you know, smaller studios or on their own. Like, how do you think about what to spend here and how do you think about how to, how to, how to iterate and learn with that?

Like, it's a very tough, you know, I hear people throw out the number like 10, of your, you know, your costs should be defaulted to marketing, but I think that's just kind of made up. So how do you think about this sort of thing? It's a great question. And I think you're bringing up, it's funny here, bring up with all the 10% of stuff. Like, when I get called into work on a crowdfunding campaign, so I would, before I worked at AMG, I did the Greenhaven one, right, which we did. It was like five products at one, did a whole big thing. And Isaac was like, hey, what do you want to do? And my main question was, well, how much money do you want to make? You know and it's like obviously we know what production costs for everything there and we could say oh it's 10%

of this but like if you've got a number that you want to make that's a realistic number not like an imaginary i want to get a Ferrari on my birthday kind of thing right Lambo LAMbo crowd fund yeah yeah yeah right we can go cool like let's let's make up a number that we think we'd like to spend right and let's make an imaginary budget of what we want we want a how to play video we want some batter reports we want some influence or you want some things and we want to do in-store stuff. I try to make my dream list first and I go through that whole list and then we look at money spends. Hey, what are the rate cards for these things? What are this on that? Some of those numbers are scary once you realize, oh shit, we got to spend actual money on this. Is that actually worth it or is that just a cool idea?

Right. And so there's been a lot of things that were cool ideas that, okay, what is that video trying to accomplish, where does a promotion trying to accomplish, can we turn that into something else and still get that beat, right? And some of those things there. So that's what I try to go from on that. Obviously, like, you want to have a how to play video. You want to have a trailer. You want to have some of these things. But some of that stuff can be done just by putting in the powered work. I did some crowdfunding work with, I was mentoring these guys for a campaign called Whisker Wars. Glasshouse games, super great kids. I said kids third in their 20s and 30s. It was a cool deck building game.

They had really cool art, and a lot of their funds went into the art because they wanted to have their game ready to go, out the gate. And so when we were talking about, like, hey, we want to have a video and do these things, they were like, cool, can we just film ourselves just chatting and we put some cool graphics and then we run around to the game store a little bit? I'm like, yes, because it still accomplishes what the goal is. It doesn't need to be this huge, complete, structured, 3D turns and renders and all this stuff. It's like people, as long as you're communicating, when he's to get communicated,

it's good. And then one of the guys learned blender, right? And he just, I'm going to learn blender. I'm going to do this stuff. And I was like, great, you've saved yourself so much money. And now you've gained a new skill. Right. And it was just doing the time and doing all of that. Obviously, you know, like, you know, that's, that was a different thing because there are any stuff there. But when building that marketing budget, I like figuring out what are our dream projects. And then what are the things that we need and then kind of, going from there, right? Because I think we get, we get their numbers around all day, but really it's, what's, what's the goal of what we're trying to accomplish? Well, so, so there's the goal,

so when you say gold, you mean goal in terms of like, okay, I want this campaign to make a million dollars. You mean goal in terms of, I need to educate people about the game. I need to get something that people can, you know, get hyped in 30 seconds. Right. I think for the candy crush nature of a crowdfunding campaign, if we're going to be doing digital ads, that has an exact money spent, right? But we know that we can spend X amount of money and we're going to hit. as many people and we're going to hope we're going to get that much conversion. That is a much different like, hey, we're going to do the number crunching game and do a lot of that stuff there versus the experiential marketing of like, hey, we need to get a lot of impressions, we need

to get a lot of eyes. How can we spend and do that? Is going to Jen Con buying the side of a building and doing a cool food truck takeover, going to have the same thing as about getting a bunch of influencers who play the game early, what's going on, right? So I think part of it also comes down to was what are you trying to build as your company? Remember what exploiting kittens? Rended out packs west when it was still that. And they had that kitten adoption center thing. Yes.

I still talk about that, right? And did it sell products? No clue. Did I go get the pet adorable kittens for like an hour and hang out? Yeah, it was great. You know? And it's like, I'm sure that marketing meeting was a blast. Like, well, what are we going to do a PAC?

So are we going to buy a thing and do a live? play and deal with this or are we going to go work at the kitten shelter and then get a bunch of things right so it's well yeah yeah and and i guess this is this this ties into a deeper point here because if my first instinct was like yeah man i wish i had their brand right like you know quoting kittens or or even you know for better for worse things like cards against humanity that gets to do like these ridiculous promotions right that are like you know super fun and super random and offensive whatever but that's not that's not my brand i couldn't do any of those things but i do think it's speaks, it speaks to a deeper point, which is the, you know, that knowing what your, like,

what your brand is and by, and brand just means like, what is the kind of, you know, what's the value you're offering? What's the audience you're trying to offer value to, right? Like, it is kind of that, like, what's that, what does that mean, right? So, you know, to circle back, like, I love deep dining on topics like this. For a lot of people, this is not their cup of tea, right? They too doubt a long time ago, they don't want to talk about like marketing in the ins and outs of budgets and spends and user acquisitions. But like I love geeking out on this sort of thing. And so part of what I do when I when I promote products is I very open about here's what we've done. Here's how this works. Here's the here's the things behind it. And for some people that they love that stuff.

And they'll come and that will attract them. And so you know, would that work for everybody to do that sort of thing? No, clearly not because you don't have the same level of nerddom that I do. Right. So I think I think there's a there's maybe it's a good kind of bigger picture marketing. insight to pull us back out from the weeds that, you know, figuring out what's true for you, right? Whereas for you, Ross, it's, you know, you love to gather people together. You have a genuine passion for, you know, for games and a passion for, you know, building communities. And so you've built a career around that and have built events and, you know, things for all the many companies that you've, you've supported. And, you know, I love to geek out on design and love to have, like, great

conversations with really interesting people. And so I've built my brand around these kinds of things. And so, you know, for the people that are listening, maybe that's the bigger question to ask rather than, you know, whether I should have a two-sided poster or, you know, or an influencer or take over a food truck. But it's like, okay, who are you? Who do you, you know, who do you want to be out in the world? And what are the things that are going to be true and authentic to you? And then that's going to attract, you know, the right audience for you. Yeah. It's, and I mean, I can, I could talk about this kind of stuff all day. I love talking marketing and talking to those kind of stuff. And it's, it's obviously, I know, I always say,

oh, an hour just passed. And I'm like, oh, we've been trying for an hour. We could keep going. You know? And so it's funny how that works. And so, yeah, I mean, it's like, I think one of the best things, too, and I have to keep reminding myself, is that Mattel still markets Uno. Right?

Like, like, you know, they still have to have somebody that's putting together marketing assets for Uno, figuring out some marketing campaign. Mark is still posted on the Facebook doing some stuff there. you know, which is like, that's refreshing, you know, because it's like, you know, you think, oh, yeah, people know, they're going to get it, they're going to do all that. But it's like, you know, hey, someone's got to, someone's got to keep on that and keep it fresh and keep it going and everything there, which is amusing. I could nerd out about, I've been using this lately as my example, but like, have you, I know you're on a big health kick, so like, you probably haven't had these, but like, have you had nerd clusters recently? What's a nerd cluster? It's the most sugaryest thing of all time. It's a it's a gummy center with nerds all over it. And so like you can kind of, it's like if M&Ms were to do a nerd, right? Instead of just being the nerds by themselves, they like a little piece you can chunk on that.

They 7-Eleven opened up a new section in their wall where they had to have like a grab bag stuff. Nerds didn't have one because they only have a little nerds candy themselves or the nerds rope. The nerds rope only lived next to beef jerky, like in the Slim Jim stuff. Right. And so they figured they had to make a new candy brand to do that. This is where I know on stuff for marketing things. But at the same time, it's like for games, you got to think about that too. I think for a lot of the time, we're always like, it's going to be a box, it's going to

send a shelf. We're going to do a thing. It's going to be an app. We're going to get new stuff. But, you know, what's next? Yeah. Yeah. Well, and I'm, and I love, I love, you know, I love innovation.

I have, I have innovated to, to a fault sometimes. and they have, you know, I'm always trying to push the boundaries. You know, we were the first deck building game on mobile. We're the only deck building game in VR. You know, Soul Ford Fusion built the first ever digitally printed, fully synced digital collection, you know, game that lives, you know, on in the physical world, on blockchain, on mobile, everywhere. And so, you know, and I, because, you know, you never know when you're pushing the boundaries like that.

What's going to work and what isn't. But, but I do think, you know, what has, there are many times where I have, thought, damn, you know, this game's really good, but we just didn't market it right. We just didn't get the good marketing. If only we had better marketing, if only we launched it better. And then there are other times, I'm like, you know, sometimes that just means that the game wasn't good enough, right? As you said earlier, Chris O'Neill from Brotherwise Games has also been on the podcast and as a good friend. And we worked together on a project that did pretty well, that Night of the Ninja for anybody that wants to pick it up.

But that, you know, good game, good art, good practicing, good product is like, you know, table stakes, right? You don't get, you don't get success for that. But you need something that's like a really innovative hook and a reason for the, you know, the oldest and still most effective marketing tool in the book to work, which is word or milk, right? The, oh my God, I can't wait to talk about this, right? The Exploding Kittens example you gave, right? Exploding Kittens, Now, I've had, you know, so many guests from Exploding kittens, from Elon to Carly to, you know, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, how the packaging that could be furry, or that you know, you, talk about it, make you talk about it, make you want to share, make you want to share, make something remarkable.

I think is really the most important part of marketing is at the beginning when it comes to product. Yeah, I mean, totally true, right? And so I like what they're doing with a lot of that stuff like that. But at the end of the day, pulling it back, like for games, it's word of mouth. You know, like I'm on a big indie miniatures game kick right now. And I've got folk that I'm like, oh my gosh, Ross, there's a game announcing this week called from viewer games called Carnivore,

and it's literally just dinosaurs that are going to be fighting each other, right? And the guy's got a really cool game called 1490 Doom. They just got included on the AV Club because the guy at AV Club has been playing a lot of Warhammer and then trying to find new skirmish games.

He found this thing, picked it up. And then I was talking with Cody, the owner, and he's like, oh, yeah, we covered an AV club. It's really cool. I can talk about my dinosaur game. They go, rar. And I was like, perfect. And it's just kind of like a,

like a fun thing and is that game going to you know break the bank and make a million dollars who knows but like for scurbish money's games right now people like fun stuff and doing neat things and the fact that we live in a world where somebody can literally just make a dinosaur game and like i'm excited for it and my buddy and i are like oh we're going to have our dinosaur teams and we're going to fight at our next big Airbnb weekend that we do it's going to be cool you know so yeah what a time but also i think what's neat is as gamers, there are so many games that we like playing. And this kind of gets back to the why the industry is so sharing. While like we may have like a certain kind of game we like, man, I'll play a

card game, I'll do a board game, I'll do a role playing game, I'll do a mini's game or a party game. Like, we just like playing games. And so we don't limit ourselves to that by what type. And so I think because of our consumers like playing multiple kinds of games, that encourages the community itself to share more because we're not, there's no competitiveness amongst the consumers. Yeah, yeah, everybody's excited to have a cool new game and we are, you know, have a big

tent even for us when it's a competitor that releases a great new game. It's like, freaking awesome. Now I get to play this great new game. Yeah, I don't know. It's going to check it out. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, that's awesome. All right, man, well, this has been great. Obviously, yeah, we've already blown past the hour and I'm sure we can keep chatting more. And hopefully

we actually will get to chat. I'll see you next week. We'll both be at Gamma. So looking forward to that. And thank you for coming on and sharing the wisdom and talking about all the fun things that we love and for being such a great friend and a great pillar in the community. I mean, I really do appreciate and acknowledge everything that you do to help everybody in the space connect, whether that be veterans and people on panels or new people just trying to get in. Like you have had a massive, direct personal impact on thousands of lives at a bare minimum that I know of. And it is something I'm so grateful for. and so grateful to get to just kind of highlight you and to praise you in this in this channel.

That means a lot. Thanks, Justin. I'm really glad for our friendship too and I like forward to it, you know, going on for a long time. All right, looking forward to it. Cheers. Cheers. 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.

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