Think Like A Game Designer - Scott Morris — Building a Brand, Navigating Contracts, and the Power of Relationships in Game Design (#71)

Episode Date: September 19, 2024

About Scott MorrisScott Morris joins us on today’s episode to share insights into the world of game design and business development. Scott is the Chief Sales and Marketing Officer at Lucky Duck Games, where he has played a key role in the company's growth, including the recent acquisition by Goliath Games. Before his time at Lucky Duck, Scott held leadership positions at GTS Distribution and Passport Game Studios. He's also the designer of Firefly: Shiny Dice, a dice game based on the beloved Firefly universe, published by Upper Deck Entertainment.In this episode, Scott walks us through his journey, from running the successful review site Crits Happen to transitioning into full-time roles within the board game industry. He shares valuable lessons on branding, including how to effectively pitch a game and the complexities of acquisitions in the gaming world. Scott’s deep dive into the business side of game design, along with his tips for navigating contracts and branding, provides essential advice for designers at all stages of their careers. Enjoy! This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit justingarydesign.substack.com/subscribe

Hello and welcome to Think Like a Game Designer. I'm your host, Justin Gary. In this podcast, I'll be having conversations with brilliant game designers from across the industry with a goal of finding universal principles that anyone can apply in their creative life. You could find episodes and more at think like a game designer.com. In today's episode, I speak with Scott Morris. Scott is the chief sales and marketing officer of Lucky Duck Games. Prior to that, he worked at GTS distribution and he's also the designer of the shiny dice, firefly dice game that was published by Upper Deck Entertainment. Scott and I have known each other for, oh, good on 20 some odd years at this point. He was originally a content creator and built the Crits Happen review site, and I got to know

him during those days, and he is honestly one of the best people in the industry. A great human being, always very focused on others and what he can do to serve the community and those around him, and that comes across in this interview. We talk about a lot of really useful topics. Scott has a lot of insight into branding, and we dive deep into that. What is branding? Why should you care about branding? How do you brand yourself?

We go into a lot of detail and very actionable tips on what this somewhat fuzzy buzzword can mean at a ground level for you, your games, your company. We also talk about how to pitch your game and specifically what not to do to pitch your game to companies like Lucky Duck at Jen Con and other places. So we give you a lot of really useful bits. of advice for anyone that's trying to publish a game and anyone who's trying to get a game discovered. And we talk about the process of how Scott got his game discovered and this lightning bolt moment, a overnight success that happened with 10 years of preparation, as he likes to say.

And finally, we talk about the process of acquisitions. Lucky Duck was recently acquired by Goliath and it is a massive company with international presence everywhere. We talk about what that means to be acquired. How do you set up a company to be acquired? What are the the upsides and downsides to acquisition. And so there's a really interesting thing for those that potentially think about starting their own company and understanding that. So this is a really great talk because we get into a lot of nitty-gritty details about game design and little tips and tricks for that. But just the business side of the industry is something I also really want to highlight. And a lot of these things like branding and acquisitions and marketing and how that

all ties together is something that's opaque to a lot of people. And so Scott was able to bring a lot of great insight. We have a great conversation. So I'm really glad I get to share this with you. I love my chats with Scott. And so it's finally great to have him on the podcast. So without any further ado, here is Scott Morris. Hello and welcome. I am here with Scott Morris. Scott. It is awesome to get to talk with you on the podcast, buddy. I know. It's nice. First, thanks for having me. And second, just thanks for having me because we don't normally get to talk a lot. So this is actually great. Well, yeah, it's the thing. I mean, we have known each other for a very long time now. I mean, we're got to be closing in on 20 years, I think. And so we've been in the

industry. We've always had great conversations when we've been together. We've had a lot of fun laughs. And we haven't been able to share them. And I haven't actually been able to do a real deep dive. And I'm actually eager to do some of that with you here and share some of the insights that I know that you have and some that I'm going to learn along the way as well. Well, I got my scuba tank. So let's go. Let's Okay, let's go. All right, so why don't you kick us off here? Let me know what was the radioactive spider bite that kind of brought you into this industry and how did you get, how did you kind of get started?

And I'm not sure I know the whole story here. What did I slip on and what bat cave did I fall into? Exactly. Yeah, I shouldn't be in this industry at all, actually. It was a complete accident. Prior to actually working and obtaining a regular paycheck in this industry, I had a review channel that I would just enjoy reviewing games on my own called Crits Happen. And I loved it, had a great time with it, got to meet a lot of people through it.

But I had spent most of my time in business development in corporate America, which is about as exciting and fun as it sounds. It's a corporate job. My easy origin story I can say is that I ended up leaving corporate America with the plan to take a year off and find out what the next road was. And I ended up six months into that at a dinner with an owner of a board game company and got into a discussion about branding and what I thought he could do better from a company perspective. And next thing you know, he's like, maybe you could come work with me. And one thing led to another.

And then I was vice president of Arcame Wonders and started my career in the industry. And I've been president of Passport Game Studios. I've run the distribution business for board games for GTS distribution. And most recently was one of the shareholders for Lucky Duck games, which just got acquired by Goliath games recently. Yeah, amazing, amazing career. And yeah, congratulations on all the success. But I don't want to gloss over several things that you said here because of them are very important.

And some of them I want to know some more about. Sure. Chris happened is when I think I first became aware of you and during that window. And I think you did the review of a World of Warcraft Minatures game back that. If I remember correctly, that was... My favorite game of all time, yes. Yeah, yeah. So that was definitely an awesome, awesome introduction.

And then you ended up designing a game for Upper Deck while I was there, too. The... Firefly Shanny Dice. Yes, Firefly Shoney Dives. I'm a huge Firefly fan, so this is a really cool thing. So how did that, where did that fit into this segment of story? Yeah, so Beck, I want to say that was towards the end of my time at Arcame Wonders, actually. It was about 2015-ish. I actually was designing a game with my kids, and it was just a game

for us to play and enjoy. And then we took it to Gen Con with us one year, and we were playing it. And a friend of ours, which we both know, Jason Brenner, he came by and he's like, what are y'all doing? And we're like, I were just playing a game. And he's like, well, what is this? It looks like a prototype. Like, yeah, it's a prototype. And one thing led to another, and we ended up playing for like three hours straight. And he was like, this is really cool. And I was like, yeah, yeah, it's been a lot of fun. And I thought that was the end of the conversation.

Like, we didn't talk about like, this is something upper deck wants to look at. This is something we think about. Like, just, hey, this is really cool. We had a lot of fun. Have a nice day, right? And then the next day, I'm walking by the upper deck booth. And he's like, hey, come here. Like, we need to talk.

And I was like, okay. Because the game at that point was, it was like orcs versus goblins. There was no, like, thematic to it. It was, you know, two young boys that were like nine and six and their dad just making a game and having fun with it, right? And he was like, well, do you think you could make it like tighter? Do you think you could make it aligned to this? And originally he had an idea for a theme that was not Firefly at all. And then over the course of time, it evolved.

We actually, I remember to this day, one of the more interesting phone calls I ever got. I was still working in Austin, Texas at the time. I live in Kansas City, Missouri now. And I was down at the JW Marriott. And I was at a meeting. And I get a phone call. And he's like, are you sitting down? I'm like, yeah, what's up?

And he goes, originally it was going to be Marvel. We were talking about like Marvel legendary, the dice game and stuff like that. And he's like, so Marvel's off the table. And I'm like, what? And he's like, yeah. And he goes, we're not going to make it. It's not going to be a Marvel. game. And I'm like, okay, you guys already paid me. So like, what's happening here? Like, how is this

going to work? And he goes, oh, no, no, I got great news. I'm like, okay. And he goes, it's going to be Firefly. And I about jumped out of my chair because I'm like you. I love Firefly. I have a very crazy fringe theory about Firefly, which I could like talk your ear off for days on. But I was just so happy to be able to work with that IP and be able to have that experience. And, um, You know, truth be told, it was not the best experience. I wish I could turn around and say like, oh, man, like my first game that I ever design on my own was like the best experience in the world. But it was something that was both a good experience and it was a learning experience. Okay.

What are the lessons you pull out of this, right? Because this is a lot of people like you get. You describe what is like a dream scenario to almost everybody listening. You happen to be playing your game at GenCon with your son and someone comes by and just. discovers your game and then you get to make it with an IP that's a dream IP with a major company and a major publisher like this is this is the like lightning strikes dream scenario and you're telling me that it's there's a lot of challenges with it I really want to surface that what did you learn what could have what what lessons came out of that what challenges were presented

yeah I think one of the biggest things I learned is about contracts and about what it goes into a contract and more importantly what isn't in a contract um a old friend of mine used to say that agreements are for when things go wrong, not for when things go right. And, you know, we did have some, some rocky roads, right? I don't want to, you know, drudge up the past and go through things that, you know, some people and I have already been through in the past on things like that. But it definitely, I've had a long phrase, you don't fail. You either when or you learn. And I did learn quite a bit from that in terms of how to protect yourself, how to protect your design, how to make sure that you have either the right input or you have, you have. And I have a lot of,

the right final say into what is happening with your game. I can tell anybody this. It doesn't matter whether it's that lightning bolt and everything's perfect or it's a, I'm struggling uphill and I'm just trying to get notice type thing. If anyone ever offers you a contract, take the time, spend a little bit of money, hire a lawyer, have them look at the contract. I did not do that and I wish that I had and I think that after the fact of that, understanding it more from a legal perspective,

probably would have put things in a much more amicable light than what they were. Now, that said, I had a great experience doing it. I loved it. I still am very happy with that game. And amazingly, like, a decade later, I still get people who, like, ping me on BG. And they're one or two camps. They're either, I hate you. You made a really complex pressure luck dice game and I don't like it.

Or, oh, my God, I love you. You understand Firefly so well. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, yeah, listen, if you're not embarrassed of your early designs and some things you could have done differently or wish could have gone differently, then I just don't think you're struggling hard. You know, you're not learning and growing. You know, like, there's plenty of games that I've had that even were very successful that I look back on. I'm like, ooh, I really would have done that differently. And so, you know, I think just to make things a little bit more concrete, I think, you know, certainly the advice, you know, bringing in an attorney.

There's also some organizations and that can help with new designers and even Gamma has some tech. template contracts and some other places that can help. I think in general, I always just like make sure that there's an outclause if they don't publish your game in a certain amount of time or if it goes out of print for a certain amount of time that you can get your rights back. I'm a huge believer in that. I also think that in general, like getting for new designers, like worry less about how much money you're going to make off your first design and more about making sure that

it actually sees the light of day and that it looks, you know, that it's something that you're proud of because you're having more opportunities down the road and getting yourself, that establishment is really critical, I think, and getting something out there is, is, worth a lot when you go your next projects and your future things you do. I think two of the things that most people forget about, number one is what happens if something happens to you? So let's say you make a game and you sign it with someone and it's going really well. Like my goal is to live forever and so far so good, but the reality is that's going to stop, right?

And if something were to happen to you and you made a game, like imagine if you were Klaus and you made Catan and like something happened to you very early in that process and that game went on to do what it did. Like wouldn't you want something going to like your kin or next again or something like that? There's some interesting rights things there that I don't think a lot of people look at. And then the other thing that I always ask people and I always always tell them to think about don't just think about what happens if things go wrong. Think about what happens if things go right.

Like what if things blow up and what if this becomes like the next? big thing, what do you need to have in there to make sure that you're protected on stuff? I've seen some people that they go into agreement with people and they don't have anything about digital stuff or any kind of derivatives. And they get into a situation where the publisher's like, well, we have the right to make a digital game and we don't have to pay you anything. You're like, no, you don't. And they're like, well, paper says this. Paper doesn't say that. So it can be really sticky. So it's definitely worth a review. Yeah. Yep, yep.

My episode with Jeff Engelstein, we talk about the industry advocacy group that he set up. I believe that it's up and running now that has a bunch of template contracts and you can even join and get some, you know, coordinated negotiation potentially. So if you're out there and you don't necessarily, you know, know who to reach out to, I'd recommend that as another potential. Yeah, he's a great resource. That whole group is a great resource. Yeah. And so, okay, let's, and I also want to kind of, there's a couple other. notes I took down while you were talking earlier, right? One, you know, you had no expectations of getting into the industry getting paid. You made a review site that you just did for passion because you loved it, right? And then that's part of why you had the relationships that you had. That's why

Jason Brenner knew who you were, right? That's part of why you were able to get that like lightning bolt, quote unquote, moment because you had already contributed value to the community. You had been having genuine enthusiasm and you had been designing a game just for fun. Like I just, these are, these are things I like to highlight because they, you know, when people that are out there, they're looking at you as the dream situation and you've, you have, I mean, you've accomplished this across the industry. You've done an amazing amount of work and you've done an amazing amount of great work and you've been rewarded for it and you're just a great person to be around. So that's why I was happy to highlight you here. But I just think there's some, there are just

common steps that I see across the board and there's those are exactly the ones that you took. And so I just want to make sure people realize that even though, you know, these are light, in one sense, it's a lightning in a bottle of moment. And in other sense, this is like, you're doing all the things that make that way more likely to strike. You've got your lightning rod. Oh, yeah. I mean, you know, the easiest way to become an overnight success is 10 years of hard work, right? That's right.

I'm a big believer. It doesn't matter what industry are in. We could be talking about board games. We could be talking about tires. We could be talking about making furniture at IKEA. Everything in life is built around relationships, in my opinion. Everything is built around fostering and growing those relationships. And as you do that, you're going to present yourself.

as, you know, a value-added person in that person's life. And when the opportunities strike and come up, they're going to say, oh, what about Justin or what about Scott or what about Mary or what about whoever? And they're going to think about that and then go to that person. So I'm a big believer in fostering and culturing relationships. Yeah. Yeah. I think that's, that's, there's really nothing more powerful than than building good relationships. And that, you know, it's basically add value, you know, without the expectation of return to the communities you care about, continue to learn and grow and build relationships and those three things. If you could do those three things consistently, I don't care what your industry is, you're going to be successful over time. You know,

can't tell you when exactly how, but that's the formula as concisely as I can think of it. And you can do the opposite and still be successful, but you're probably not going to be very well liked or respected in your industry. And I would challenge you that you probably wouldn't be a successful really in a long term. Yeah. Yeah. Well, it becomes definition of success, right? Because for me, like, surrounding myself with awesome people and working together to make awesome things and help each other. Like, where we else people make awesome things, help each other grow is my company motto. And so if I'm doing that, that's success.

Even if I made a bunch of money and pissed a bunch of people off with some project, that's not. That doesn't mean success to me. So I do think it's essential to a version of success that you will be happy about, you know, looking at them from your deathbed, looking back and saying, yes, this is, you know, I did good in this world. So, so I, the other note that I wanted to pick apart from what you'd said was, you said, hey, I just had a conversation about branding thoughts.

And you just kind of glossed over that. And I think a lot of our audience, branding sounds like something that Nike does or sounds like something you do to a cow or like, what is it? What were these thoughts that suddenly got you a job? What does it mean to be good at branding? And obviously, we can be specific to the board game industry or go as wide as you want with this. Yeah, yeah.

So, yes, you can brand a cow. Yes, Nike does brand quite a bit. No, so the original thing was I met a guy named Brian Pope, who is the owner of Arcane Wonders. And at the time, I was playing his game, Mage Wars. And I had just come back from a show. And everywhere at the show, it was Mage Wars, Mage Wars, Mage Wars, Mage Wars, Mage Wars. His booth was Mage Wars. His people were wearing Mage Wars stuff.

His people had hats, T-shirts, polos, all that stuff. And when we sat down at dinner, the guy that knew him and knew, me introduced him as the owner of Arcane Wonders. And I said, who's that? And he said, oh, we make Mage Wars. I'm like, oh, okay, yeah, got it, got it. And over the course of conversation over the evening, I told him, I said, you know, this is great. If you only want to make Mage Wars the rest of your life, like, that's fine. But if you want to become something more and dabble outside of that game and do more than just that one line of games, you can't have your branding to the public be the game. Like you've got to be the company that makes that game, right?

So a very basic kind of stuff, but it was a very good conversation and it kind of led to, you know, what does he want to do with his company? Where did he want to go with his company and, you know, got down that road. I did a lot of business development work for Dell when I was with Dell in Austin, Texas and set up a couple of different businesses inside of there that was very, creative and different things, even for a high-tech company. One of my favorite moments of my life, actually, was working with a group that did engineered engineer server building, and we got to put together the back-end cloud infrastructure when most people were looking at each other going, what the heck is a cloud,

that helped with Obama's inauguration, which was amazing. And you want to talk about stressful, like getting calls at 3 a.m. from engineers going, God, this is broken. Like, we got to fix it. It was pretty crazy and tough, but it was a lot of fun to build that business. It was really cool. Very cool. So, you know, I want to dig into this more because I think most people are still going to be

lost to this. And I wouldn't even say to most people, like, I've been doing this for a long time. And I still think, you know, trying to figure out how and when one should be focused on the branding and promotion of a game versus the branding and promotion of a company versus the branding and promotion of the people within that company. Like, and what does that mean? and like how does how do you think about that kind of an investment right because it takes you have to spend your time and resources and energy and branding takes a lot of that and it's it doesn't have an

immediate return on investment a lot of the time it's something you're building in over the long term so you've done this now for multiple different companies across you know multiple different industries as well like how how does you know maybe if it's not branding 101 it's like what is it you know how should we be thinking about this as as individuals as companies as creators when we're trying to grow So when I think about the word brand just in general, I always think back to something that Jeff Bezos said, which is your brand is what people say about you when you're not in the room. And I think that's extremely important, whether you're an individual or whether you're a company. From a company perspective, you really have to not think about what's the right colors, what's the right font, what's the right tone? Like, that's all garbage.

Like, throw it out the window. What you should think about is what do I want someone who is using my product or using my service? What do I want them to think of us as a company? What do I want them to think of when they think of us as a company? And when you start to put yourself in the position of the consumer, you start to understand how to deliver better to that consumer. You hit the nail on the head. It's not easy. It's something that takes time.

I've been at Lucky Duck now for just over two years, and I'm still barely scratching the surface of what I wanted to do from a branding and a marketing perspective. So still quite a bit to do. So how would you answer that question for Lucky Duck? What would you say people say about you when you're not in the room? What's the either? It's interesting. Right now, I would actually go as far as to say that we have a recognizable brand, but not an identifiable brand. What I mean by that is people know our logo, they know our colors, they know some of our games, but they don't necessarily immediately equate us to this is that company, right? And are you saying that based on like gut instinct or have you done customer research or like how do you how do you know how'd you come

to that? Yeah, a little bit of gut instinct, a little bit of customer research on both. We, you know, most people when they think Lucky Dot games, they either think of Chronicles of Crime or Flamecraft. Those are our two biggest selling games are the ones in front of people the most. When ironically, Flamecraft is actually Cardboard Alchemies game, and we are their partner. They are the original designers and developers of the game, and then we are the people that have helped distribute that game after they did their Kickstarter. Chronicles is our own. It's our own homegrown kind of thing interior to us, and it's a digital hybrid game, which is rather

unique and different because it uses the digital apps from either your phone or your tablet or your computer to kind of enhance the narrative experience. And I think even with those two games selling hundreds of thousands, if not millions of copies, Chronicles of Crime has sold over a million copies since 2017 when it was released, there's people who look at us and they know who we are, but they don't necessarily know exactly to put their finger down and say, this is that company, this is what they do, this is what they're known for. I think we're still identifying that ourselves and getting that out there in front of people. So what is it, that then you were the for Chronicles of Crime I guess you weren't there during this initial

launch period we're like what do you think got that to success within the company and then at what point should a company say hey here's my this is our main brand this our main game that's what matters to make this shift from okay we're not just Chronicles of Crime we're whatever the full sure yeah yeah um you know it's interesting so you know Vince the CEO of Lucky Duck the original owner his whole plan um was based around digital hybrid being a thing. Not necessarily Chronicles Crime being the focus, but the idea of digital hybrids where you take the narrative experience of playing games that are bigger than just regular board games, and you have the app deliver that narrative experience for you. So you have

the physical action of us playing games, and then the app adding to the experience. Excuse me. So past Chronicles of Crime, we've done other things as well. We're actually just now about to go to print with the game called The Dark Quarter, which I am like, super excited and super proud about because it's a game that has got a very unique kind of subject matter and how it handles things and it did extremely well on Kickstarter and it's been a little longer than we would have liked to have gotten to get to the finish line but we're getting there which is very exciting on stuff you're I'm sure you're the only one that has had that feeling yeah yeah exactly like you know everything is on time and under budget in this industry exactly exactly

no it's a challenging thing for companies right because most most people in our space, meaning specifically the board game space, if they have a success, an early success, it can be that lightning in a bottle moment, right? It can be the, man, we just did something amazing on crowdfunding or we just did something amazing. We're going to retail and it's blown up. What do we do? Back to that whole question of what happens when things are successful and not when things are a failure. You have kind of two paths in front of you. You can either say, okay, this is what got us to the dance. We need to lean really. hard into this. Like we just think this is all we got to do all the time and that's it. Or, okay,

let's have what got us to the dance be the foundation and then build up from there and have other things that speak to other types of gamers as well. Right. And I think Lucky Duck for, you know, first two or three years tried to find its identity with that and tried to understand where it wanted to go with that. We've definitely learned in the last probably three years that digital hybrids are not easy. Like, not at all. People, people, one of my favorite comments ever was when someone was like, well, if you just need an app developer, my brother in Canada does these things. And I'm like, I got that all the time. I'm sure he does. I'm sure he does them very well, but it's not that easy. Yeah. You basically, you know, there's, there are challenges with digital development.

There's challenges with physical development. And when you do a hybrid game, you take on all of those challenges, right? I mean, we, yeah, yeah. I mean, as of the recording this, we just launched the like free to play version of the Soulforce Fusion app on Mac and PC. And it's a physical game that can be scanned into the online account. And there's, we have a whole web three element that's going live too. Like it's like every challenge that I could choose to take on, I've taken on. And it's like, yeah, you, you don't, this is not an easy process. And frankly, I mean, I've had to Jordan Weissman on the podcast and he's been on this,

in this zone for a long time. And he's one of our advisors. And it's like, it's an incredibly compelling space because you can get all of this extra advantages of having obviously the narrative aspects of. digital or the ability for it to handle a lot of the bookkeeping for you and the fun of being the tactile parts of being around a table and the fun of being around a table together. But it is a heavy lift and many, many people have died on this hill. Yeah.

Yeah, it's funny. When I talk about us making digital hybrids, one of the first things that non-board gamers always ask me is they're like, oh, that's got to be a crowded space. I'm like, board gaming is digital like interaction is not a big thing. in the board gaming space. And it's interesting to me to see that the kind of the non-active board game people immediately think, oh, technology must have found a way into your space immediately, right? So it's very, very curious.

Yeah. So what have you learned about what works and what doesn't work in that space? And what do you see as the kind of future of this hybrid kind of digital physical development and game design? Oh, boy. We could rewind and go back to your last podcast and talk about a little AI. if we wanted to. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

There's a, man, which, by the way, that was a great conversation. I thought that was awesome. I think it's a good question. So I would not want to act as though I'm the expert on this because I'm not the person on the digital side. I'm not the person making these things or writing these things. I know, I think some people look at this and they think, oh, it must be like writing a book, right? If the whole goal of the digital hybrid experience is to just provide a narrative version of what's happening in this game, it must just be like writing a book. And it's not at all, right? Because you have, it is like writing a book, but it's kind of like playing 4D chess.

You're writing four to five books at the same time that all overlap each other. And it's almost like someone said, let's take these four choose your own adventure books, put them in a blender and just scramble them up like crazy. So the mental process of that is really tough and really challenging for folks. And it can be more draining than people think, especially depending on the subject matter and what you're doing. Like I mentioned in the Dark Quarter, for example, it's a game that's set in 1980s, New Orleans. And it's that kind of black magic voodoo kind of stuff going on. And it deals with some pretty heavy things. It's a game that we promoted on Kickstarter as being adult-oriented.

It's a game that we knew was going to have, you know, things that, hey, this. These things may trigger certain people depending on your life experiences, but we wanted to make it gritty. We wanted to make it realistic. And I'm very proud of what the team has put together, but that's not easy when you're layering in all of those things on top of all that. So I think if anything, I've learned that it's good to give people space. It's good, you know, as a creative person, you always want to have your space to be able to reflect and think back on what you have done up at that point and what you can change to get better moving forward. And I think that we're, as in general, I don't think we're an industry that necessarily drives people to, you know, craziness based on deadlines and things like that.

But I do think that it is important when you're taking on a project as big as things like this. You give people the space to, you know, maintain their own sanity on what they're working on and stay motivated to keep working on and delivering the best stuff. Yeah. I think that, you know, giving creative space as you talk about it, I think is important. think, you know, for me, that you need to have contact with reality and, like, constraints actually breed creativity, right? And so we end up, you know, having the, especially when you're saying, okay, we have a digital game and developing that, like, it becomes an order of magnitude more expensive to build the digital parts of these games, right? The nice thing about tabletop gaming

nowadays, more than ever, it's been, it's, it's easier and cheaper to make a game than it ever has been shipping, distributing, and managing that, it's a whole different beast. But like the digital development is very, very expensive, relatively speaking. And so being able to build and iterate in prototypes that you can do without the digital aspect and get as much learnings as you can there has been one of the things we've felt. I mean, it's part of why SulfoFusion is a hybrid deck game because we're like, all right, let's play this thing physically. Let's see what we can get out of that, make that experience great.

And then we know it's going to work well digitally because that's where the origins of it came from. So there's a lot of lessons, I think, to derive from just, take even those that want to build purely digital games as much as possible you can leverage the strengths of tabletop which is that tighter cheaper iteration loop uh to really kind of learn as much as you can amen yeah 100% agreed so i want to shift then as you mentioned right you know the sort of the you're not the digital designer per se but you are the you know chief of sales and marketing and while i talk about the process for making games and the cost of making games being easier than it's ever been, I would argue that the process of marketing and selling a game is harder than it's

ever been. That there is more. And so, and so this is, this is the big challenge. And I, I would say, I am far from having solved this for my own company and team. Right. Like how do you, you know, when we launch a new ascension thing, I've got a certain amount of audience. I know they're going to buy it and we can get it going. But when it's like a brand new, new brand, new game, new thing, even with, you know, the kind of reach and pedigree that my team has, it's still very tough. And for new players and new designers, it's even harder. So how do you think about this? How do you approach sales and marketing in the tabletop gaming space in 2024?

So ironically, my role has changing over the exact moment that we are speaking and doing this. As I mentioned at the beginning, Lucky Duck was acquired by Goliath a couple of months ago. I'm actually shifting from being in charge of the sales and marketing teams globally to being much more focused on things like our website, focused on our crowdfunding teams, things like that, product sourcing, licensing, things like that. But all of that still comes back to marketing.

This is one of the most interesting discussions that I have with designers or just publishers that want us to get involved with their games. Who's your target audience? And nine times out of ten, they look at me like I've got three heads. or they go, well, gamers, of course. And it's like, right, yeah, that's like saying human beings. So you can't be that broad. You can't be that open on things, right?

Like you just mentioned, like when you make an Ascension game, you know that there's a certain amount, right? Because you know the type of people that want to play that game. You know the community that you've built around that game already, so you can kind of, to a degree, you know, finger in the wind, guesstimate how much of that community is going to immediately lock onto the new game or the new version of Ascension that comes out.

But that comes over time. Back when you made the first ascension, I still remember being at Gen Con and someone coming to me and telling me, you've got to play this. It's like someone decided to make Magic the Gathering draft mode as a board game. It's like, it's great. Yeah, didn't Donald Vaccarino do something like that? And they're like, don't know who that is. Let's talk about this.

It was really funny. But it's amazing to me how many people don't actually sit down and say to themselves, what type of gamer, not just gamers, but what type of gamer is going to be interested in this? I don't mean like males versus females. I mean like getting into the nitty gritty. Like I remember, for example, when we just finished a campaign called the Flames of Fafnir, which is a very, very unique game. It is a game that you spend about maybe five to six minutes as a group playing this cooperative, semi-cooperative. I'm going to stop the dragon from attacking the castle Euro resource management game.

And then you throw fireballs down this gigantic dragon that comes out and destroys everything you just built like it's in a Mara thrash game. And I remember saying to Vince, I was like, this game is wildly cool because it's a bit of Amera Thrash. It's a bit of Euro resource management. And it's kind of like somebody said, I got an idea from Fireball Island and I can make this better. and this is going to be really cool. And I remember saying, we're probably going to piss off everybody with this campaign.

Like, the people who love Ameri Thrash don't want to spend five minutes doing Euro resource management. The people who love Euro resource management will absolutely hate a random number generator flying out of the mouth of a dragon and destroying their stuff and everything that they built. Can you just give a brief?

Just give it because some people won't know those terms of Ameritrash and Eurogame. Most people will, but just give a quick brief understanding of that so people can follow it. So I guess by my definition, Euro resource management would be a game that is designed around selecting an action to take something and make it into something else or having an action result in something else. Efficient resource exchange rates? Yeah, research exchange rates.

Sure. I'm going to take this blue cube. I'm going to put it in this space and it's now going to become two red cubes and this is what I can do with it. Not super random, very strategic turn-bated. No random. No dice rolling. It's very strategic. mind thinking and investment about planning. Whereas Amerithrash is about combat. It's about

explosion. It's about let's have randomness and let's have a lot of dice and let's have a lot of dice to determine how many dice we actually use and things like that. Great. Yeah. So we're very different, typically speaking, very different target audiences and you launching, you've launched a game that is somewhere in the middle. Somewhere in the middle, yes, which is not usually a very fun place to be. But we were very happy with how it came out. I think it could have been more successful than what it was. But I think that's the risk you run when you're doing something unique and something different with something like that. But I think when you have a game that is more definable, I think it's very good to sit down and say to yourself, you know, who are the target gamers

that would play this game? And then not just who are they? Where are they? How do I go reach my audience? Crowdfunding is a great example. Ten years ago, you could build your audience on crowdfunding. You can't do that now. You have to bring your audience to crowdfunding. And you have to find there's a lot of different like services and different, you know, companies you can work with to do that. But at the end of the day, you have to raise awareness. You have to bring them to a specific space and help them buy your product very easily. And that is not easy right now, especially as every single day, it seems like the community spaces get splintered more and more and more. It's just so many different.

avenues. Yeah. So I would love because you're, I agree with everything that you're saying, though I think that they're, they're a little fuzzy for people, right? Everybody knows this in general now. This, oh, I got to find my target audience. I got to reach my target audience. I got to grow an audience. I got to somehow get them to want to buy my stuff. But like, can we make this concrete? Can we give like some specific examples? Like, how do I know what my target audience is? What is the strategies that I should be researching to find them? And what are the types of what does it mean to be able to reach out to them. Like I would love to sort of get as concrete as you can,

either through a specific thing that you've done in the past, or you can pick a hypothetical thing, or you could pick one of my games if you want, like something where you would, how would you approach this? And so we could really understand like somebody out there that imagine somebody else out there is like, I got a game, I don't know what to do with it.

Like how do we get from here to there? So I'll give you a real world example. So we did a partnership with Splatter Spelan last year. We did a reimagining a food chain magnet and did it all like, three-dimensional, beautiful, blew it up. And when we did it, we actually said to ourselves, the people who play this game may not actually want this game. The people who play spot or spelling games, like one of the joking things on the front cover of Food Chain Magnate is 100% dice

free, right? It's, they don't, they want you to feel like you're going to get any randomness. This is a game that is designed to be as strategic as possible. And the people who tend to play those games don't necessarily want to bling out their games. They don't necessarily want to blow them up into these big, overproduced things. They want a game that's very efficient. They want a game that works and they want a game that rewards them for their mental effort put into those games. So we knew going into it when we talk with Spotter, we're like, we know we're going to be about to make a product that is not really actually for the core audience. We're actually going to be making it for the audience that hasn't dove into this yet.

because our belief was that it's a game that's in the top 50 of BG. It's a game that's absolutely beloved by many people. It's almost 10 years old. In fact, I think next year is its 10 year anniversary. But there's people who I know, and I've played Food Chain Magnet dozens of times, who look at me when I talk about that game, and they're like, oh, that game's so complex. That game's so hard. I'm like, it's not really.

You may think it is, but it's actually not really that complex. So we had a vision of an idea to make a game. that was actually designed as a complex strategy game, but make it for the non-hardcore strategy people. Make it a way that people looked at it and saw that toyification factor, saw that awesome looking factor. Understanding, there's always going to be people who play food jam magnet who want that and love that, but that's not the majority of that crowd. So how did we go into that with that crazy idea and come out of it actually being successful with that? One of the things we immediately did when we started having all the followers on our game found campaign

was we surveyed them and we said, do you own food chain magnet already? And it was amazing on the first response. This was over like 3,600 backers when we first did this response. 65% of them were, nope, don't own it. Have no, no copy of it, nothing in my house, nothing at all. So we knew we were on the right target of we are making this game for people that haven't bought the game already or don't play the game on a regular basis already. And it was a lot of conversation back and forth with people like that to understand how are we going to make this as successful as possible for them. So you had, let me just kind of restated here and make sure could I got it.

So basically you had a hypothesis that this is a great game, but it's off putting to a wide audience because it's perceived as a super deep strategy game and not as successful. I would say there's a barrier to entry to it. Sure. Okay. So there's a buried entry. So you're going to design a game that removes or lowers that

barrier to entry to reach, bring this what already is an existing great gameplay to a different audience. And then from there, you put up a game found page and you said you started surveying people when they were following. How did you get those followers in the first place? We did a lot of core marketing on BG because we know that that's where a lot of the strategy board gamers would be. When you look at that type of crowd that would normally play a spot or spelling game,

that's where they're going to be. So we started there and having people come to the game found. page. The original game found page was really basic. There was only like, I think like three images, maybe two, two and a half images that were on there, but just enough to show the idea and the concept and visuals of it. And so you would, and so is this, is this, are you guaranteed that you're green lighting and you're already making this game and you already have it ready? Or is this like an experiment? Oh yeah. We do event, no, we dove in head first and we were like, we're doing this. Like we, we had a strong enough belief that we were on the right path. Okay. So without customer

data, you're like, we're doing this. And then we're going to use customer data to refine. Board Game Geek is the home where you think your audience lives that are interested in strategy games, but would be open to a lower barrier to entry version of this because you know the main version is already a top 50. You put up a page with limited resources and started paying to acquire our users to come to that page from the location. And then you started to survey those users to get more data to get more comfortable with your assumptions and be able to refine and move forward. Great. Love it. Okay, great. So that's like, you know, again, it's just like a, it's very straightforward, strategic process.

Now, what do you think about? Because we have considered this. And actually, I think even as this is happening, we have a, so we just did our first game found. You know, we did Kickstarter for, you know, since the beginning. We just finally switched over to game found for a recent Ascension campaign. And we knew obviously how to reach that audience. And we had that game, Ascension Legends I had designed long before we launched it. Everything was ready to go.

But now we actually have another page of stuff that's a game that's like very early. We actually just posted it up just to see what traction it might get. get with a couple images and to see and use that as a determining factor for us of whether we want to go forward and actually put in the rest of the resources to promote that game. What are your thoughts on that kind of approach or something where you don't necessarily have to build an entire game? You could test the waters, if you will, to see if there's anything interesting. Oh, no, yeah.

I think that's one of the best parts about the crowdfunding side, right? You can do all that stuff that you just said and then never have to fall through because you haven't started a project. You haven't collected money. You haven't done anything on it. So you can start to see kind of what the. reactions are from it. I think people used to do the same thing 10 years ago on BG, where they would just put up a page and a couple of pictures and start to kind of tease things out to people

and stuff like that. But I think that's one of the nicer things is that as our industry has grown, I think the consumer has become much more savvy and much more connected, especially when even though we just talked a little bit about how each of the avenues are splintering and fracturing in terms of all the different community bases. When you look at the core things, For example, you just talked about GameFound versus Kickstarter. If you have a game like Food Chain Magnate like we did where we added all the miniatures into it, or if you have a game that is similar to like something that Awakened Realms makes where there's a lot of miniatures in it, anything with a high amount of plastic,

that is a great area to start doing research in his game found because that's what that crowd loves. That's what they go for. Kickstarter still does that, but Kickstarter is much broader and you can be successful with the like $15, $20 board games that are, you know, smaller size on. and everything like that. I'm not so sure that those are as effective on GameFound, although there are success stories happening with it,

but the communities have seemed to kind of derive themselves as to what they're focused on for each of those. Yeah, I find, I mean, it's tricky. Like the, I'm not, I question going to, going to crowdfunding with any of these $10 or $20 price point items. Like, it just seems like you really need high price point items and opportunities for your most invested people. Because like people who are going to back a crowd fund, right?

You're intrinsically a pretty invested person to begin with, right? You're like, I'm willing to pay money for something that doesn't exist yet because I want to get the exclusive. I want to get it first. I want to be a part of the process. And so, you know, there's, there's, you know, you're talking about, you know, maybe in the single digit thousands for most people of backers that you're going to get versus you're hoping to sell tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of units at retail. When it comes to a $10, $20,000 price point item, a couple thousand backers is not a lot of revenue to justify the overall experience. and marketing. So how do you think about that in terms of like how you launch those projects versus big miniatures projects and things like that? The first thing that actually comes to my mind

is Jason Tagmire and ButtonShay games. When I look at the community and what he's built and what he does is really interesting. If Jason came to me today and said, I have a business and I want you to invest in it and here's what I'm going to do, I'd laugh him out of the room. If anyone's not familiar with what Button Shy is, it's basically a game company that makes games almost exclusively, just on Kickstarter. They sell them on their website as well, but they make games that are microgames. They're like 18 cards, 24 cards, and they fit inside of a foldable wallet. When you get it, that's all it is. It's a wallet in an envelope. There's no box to it. There's no packaging to it. There's no blister pack to it. You just get a little wallet. But they are some of the most fun

games that I have backed and played over the course of being a superbacker on Kickstarter. And he was very simple. He said, I have a plan and I have an idea and this is what I want to do. He went back to our original point of the conversation about the two paths you go down. Do you lean into something that got you to the dance or do you become something more than what you originally planned to be? He has leaned into what got him to the dance. And he's done quite a bit of making sure his community knows, hey, you're never going to see us pull out some $60 deluxe crazy copy of this. Like, these games are $12. These games are $15. But you're going to give you. get your $12 worth and you're going to love every minute of it.

Yeah, yeah. Well, I mean, I remember even from the first instance of that, I think is like the cheap-ass games from James Ernest, who's also been a guest on the podcast and a friend. And he's, you know, being able to just like, and this goes back to our branding conversation, right? Like, just be up front. You're literally calling it cheap-ass games. Like, you're like, okay. Like, you know what you're getting.

Like, that is a lied brand. That is right. I didn't, I would never expect James to sell me on a $75 full of miniatures game, right? Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. And so I think that, and when I think about branding, you know, it's something I've put a lot of thought in over the years, right? We launched as a single game company, Ascension kind of took us, but we started launching a lot of other games. Now, many of them are Ascension adjacent with other deck building games like, you know, Shards of Infinity or so forth fusion, which has obviously appeals to the same crowd. But we've also launched other games like, you know, you got to be kidding me and bad beats and others like more social party games that are not necessarily the same overlap. And how do you unite those, you know, how do you bring people across and let them know what they're expecting when. they buy a Stoneblade game, right? Or they buy a game from designed by me because I've also designed games for other companies and I'll put them under different brands or whatever.

And so I think that when I think about branding, honestly, a lot of it comes down to, frankly, I think self-awareness, right? Like there's a certain set of things that you as a person, that you as a company, the DNA of what you have and what you've built that you can't get away from and you shouldn't try to, that you need to like leaning into that. Right. So part of my quote unquote branding is things like this podcast because like I am passionate about design and games and I love having conversations like this. And so I'm going to put it out there because it's what I like to do. And like I bring people into that process and let them behind the scenes. And it's not necessarily speaking to what you're exactly going to get from my games, but it speaks to the ethos around it.

And it's something that helps to build a community of like minded people that all are kind of, you know, interested in the same sorts of stuff. So it's been an interesting journey, which I haven't really, some of it's been conscious, but some of it's been just kind of, you know, haphazard, frankly, of just like moving and trying things until I find something that fits because the effort of branding requires you

to be consistently like pairing things together, right? You're pairing your games and traits and attributes and, you know, over and over again until it's like linked in somebody's mind, such that as you said, you know, or as Jeff Bezos, I guess, said at first that your brand is what people say about you when you're not in the room.

And that kind of consistency is a freaking sloth if it's not true to me. I mean, it's like just not going to work in my opinion. So you got to find out who you really are. Yeah. It's not quick. It's an iterative thing. It's always going to be changing. You know, when I first came here two years ago, one of the first conversations that I had with Vince was I said, we really need to change some things because your company that has a game called Yamiami Monster Tummy, which is designed for eight-year-olds. And then you have a game called The Dark Quarter, which is designed for only 18 and above. And that's like literally a hundred and 80 degrees opposite of each other, it's hard for anyone to understand what our brand identity is

if that's the range of games we're dealing with. I'm actually really excited about it now because as part of the Goliath acquisition, we are now dubbed as the strategy division, the strategy brand for Goliath games. Goliath is very well known for making skill and action games that are designed for kids and younger gamers and stuff. So we're not going to be playing around with kids games much anymore. We're not going to be looking at party games because they have a party games division. We're going to be focused on traditional hobby strategy games, which I'm really excited about because that's where my DNA is. Yeah, yeah. All that's, yeah, here, here. So, so let's, you've brought up the acquisition multiple times. Now, let's dive in to acquisition,

because that sounds to me like, one, a fun board game, but two, a, you know, it's a process that is pretty mysterious to a lot of people, right? And I have considered this in the past of like, do I, would I want to get acquired? And like, it's kind of weird because I love what I do and I love my company and I love the people in it. So it's hard for me to imagine not doing that. But acquisition doesn't mean you're not doing that. It means somebody else's, you know, maybe you got more resources, whatever. So maybe walk me through, you know, did they approach you or you shopping around? What does it look like? What's it been like? What's an acquisition feel like from the inside? It feels like you're on a roller coaster ride 24-7. That's what it feels like.

No, it's been a great experience. I've done this before. I've actually been through 13 M&As in my life, mergers and acquisitions. Most of them from the corporate world with Dell, being on the business development side, we did a lot of acquisitions of other companies. That was mostly software companies and IT companies. So this was my first one from a physical company, meaning a board game, you know, is the property that you're dealing with.

It was really interesting. I really, I don't know where it started. I know we weren't necessarily shopping around. I know that. In fact, Vince and I, when I first came here, we had a five-year plan of like what we were going to do and then what would we consider in five years. And it was only until that like five-year mark that we were really like considering, okay, we want to be acquired by anybody or bought out by anybody.

And I always get a little worried when I hear that word because in my experience from the corporate world, it was always a very negative thing. It was, uh-oh, the two people that don't. this software company or selling it, it's great for them. It sucks for everybody else, right? And it was always a very negative thing because especially in the IT world, there usually was a lot of downsizing. There was usually a lot of, you know, oh, well, you have lawyers. We have lawyers too. So your lawyers can go home. And you have HR people, and your HR people can go home because we have HR too, right? Things like that. With us, it was a very different discussion, right?

It was a big discussion about where this company was, where Goliath was from a strategy perspective, from a gaming perspective, from being both a game company and a toy company, working on two different types of products and two different types of industries. And it was my kind of first aha moment, my first like, this may be the right path and this may be the right thing we're walking down, was I got to meet the CEO and the owner of Goliath when I was at New York Toy Fair. we sat down and started talking about what strategies can be, what he sees from the market, what I see from the market, things like that. And the first thing that I got walking away from him was this is a guy who's very focused on his family. He's a guy who stressed many times. He's like, this is a family-owned business.

This is a family-run business. His dad started the company and now he runs it. And that felt very genuine. It was something that when I walked away from that conversation, I was like, it didn't feel like lip service. Didn't feel like he was just saying, oh, yeah, yeah, we're a family-run company or family-owned company. And over the course of time, just meeting with him and having conversations with him, learning about his character, that all got cemented over that course of time.

But it was a very interesting conversation about he could, if he wanted to, he could go out and acquire a board game company. Insert X company into this discussion, whoever it is. But the problem is, is Goliath is a multi-country global, company. They have offices in Germany, in Spain, Northern Europe, Southern Europe, UK, US, all over. And if you take a company, like let's say you have four or five people working at your company, you may have a big hit. You may have a game that is really, really big, a company like Deliaith, like you just said, could provide more resources and provide more opportunities to it.

But how does a four or five person board game company get acquired and support an engine that is 120 people over like 13, 14 different countries. You don't. Like you just, you break. It's just not easy to do that at all. So with us, we're a company that's 60 people. Lucky Duck was 60 people before we got acquired, which most people don't know and don't realize.

We do quite a bit. We have offices in France in Poland, Italy, and then America. But we also do things apart from just publishing our own games. We do localization and translations as well. So we're a pretty big country. company. And the ability for us to not only make good products, buy good people, but have the scale and the scope to be able to come in and say, yeah, we can support a company that is on this level

and be ready to hit the ground running. That was a big thing. For me, and this is something that I'm going to take to my grave and I'm going to be very happy about for the rest of my life. My like, all in moment of all my chips are on the table and I'm ready to do this was when we, we started having discussions about people. And like I mentioned, I had been through 13 different M&As. Somebody always had something happen to them. When we got told, no, we want you to operate in this way. And therefore, people are safe.

And it's not going to be a reduction in force or layoffs or whatever words you want to use for it. I told Vince, this doesn't happen. Like, it does not happen. Like, you don't get to go back to a team usually and say, we built something that this big giant company is interested in acquiring and making part of their portfolio. And oh, by the way, everybody's job is safe. Like when you tell anybody in any industry, this company is buying us, that's the first thing anybody thinks of is, uh-oh, what does this mean for my job? What does it mean for my livelihood? To be able to come back and know that that's part of our legacy was so

gratifying for me that I was like, yeah, what are we going to do? I said we could spend the next five years, we build it up, more money, more attention. Somebody comes in and says, here, we'll pay this amount of money for it, but you're going to have to fire like half the crew. I don't want that to be my legacy. I didn't want that to be, oh, you're the guy that sold this company and dump 30 people or dump 20 people. Like, I just did not want that to be my legacy at all. So from both a relationship perspective and a professional perspective, it's been a roller coaster, but it's been an amazing roller coaster. Yeah, that's amazing. Yeah, that's a, well, speaks a lot to your character, which I already knew. And it's, I am a character. Yes. I just, because I wasn't clear,

when you were having these initial conversations, was this always in the context of we're looking to be acquired or they were looking to acquire you? Like, who, who reached out first? Were you shopping around? Like, what was the, what was the, I can't necessarily say if Vince reached out to Yocan or Yokinon reached out to Vince, but I know that we were not shopping around. That's what I know. Yeah, fair enough. Okay, cool. Well, it's a, it's very exciting and it's great to hear this kind of story there. And it's, I mean, honestly, it seems like despite it being a roller coaster, it's a, it's a pretty dream scenario. It's a healthy roller coaster. Yeah, I mean, look, it's not easy. These things are always challenging. I, I, you know, going through as many as I've

gone through, it's usually the, the people are the, the challenging part about it, right? Processes, documents, all that stuff gets worked out. But, you know, it's the culture. It's how how people work together. But, you know, just being open-minded and, you know, going into it every day of, you know, hey, we've got an opportunity to do something here is awesome. Are there any tips or things that come to mind if somebody wants to, you know, set their company up for this kind of success and acquisition, like things that make it easier, things that make it harder, things that, like, people maybe wouldn't necessarily think about

in terms of like, okay, I'm going to grow this business and I'm looking to get acquired. Like, what should... Dig into your books. Dig into your books. hire a really good CPA or an accountant, make sure you know the financial side of your business. That's the most important thing. You could have the most successful game on the planet. You could be the hottest thing at the dance and everybody wants to play your game.

But if you don't have a way of proving to a company that wants to invest in you, whether it's an acquisition or whether it just want to invest in you, if you don't have a way of proving to them, X goes in and Y comes out and actually prove that. not I think I know that that's like one of the most important thing and hopefully why is greater than X in this circumstance. Hopefully why. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Great.

Well, so we're, uh, man, there's so many more things I want to talk about. The, the your, your expertise in product sourcing and licensing. I think these are areas also that can be a little opaque to people. So maybe let's talk about what that means. Uh, what does success look like here. whole podcast on this. I just had a fabulous conversation. There was a designer that walked up to me. I'll keep the person nameless so that we protect the innocence or the guilty or whatever you want to call it. They walked up to me at Gen Con completely randomly. And they said, hey, are you guys taking pitches and can I pitch a game to you?

And I said, no, and I would highly suggest you don't do that to anybody else. And he was like, what? And I said, yeah, so this is the biggest show of the year. year. There's like 70,000 plus people here. And it is nearly impossible to walk up, get time on someone's calendar, and pitch them a game when you don't have a relationship. And he was like, oh, so it's only if you have a relationship. I went, no, I didn't say it was only if you have a relationship. I'm just telling you it's really, really hard with what you're talking about doing right now. I said, I'm happy to get your name and number. I'm happy to have a conversation with you after the show and sit down and talk about stuff. But what you just asked of me is super

difficult for at this show. And it actually, when we got back, ended up having a conversation with him. And it spawned into this great conversation about what is the right way for designers to approach publishers. How do they know it's the right publisher? What are the good things to do, the bad things to do? It's a great, great conversation. So I could probably talk to your off for days about this. Well, you're going to have to give us some highlights of that conversation because I know that you have just teased our audience in a way that I cannot. If I just let that lie and say, oh, well, we'll get them next time. I will get riots, internet rioting.

So you don't have to go through a whole conversation, but let's give some hits, right? How do you pitch? How do you find the right of folks? Like, that's what everybody listening wants to know. So I'll tell you, one of the, I'll compare it to a conversation that happened 10 years ago. 10 years ago, I went to my first speed gaming event. It was at gamma. It was, you know, like 15 tables.

People had their games out and you could just sit down for two. two minutes, quick introduction to the game and the person and then move around the next thing. And the first three tables, you could tell we're a little haphazard, a little, like, I've never done this for, I don't know how to do this. Same thing for me, I'm a publisher. I've never done this. I don't know how to do this. It was a little awkward and a little confusing.

And then I sat at the third table and this guy, Jeff, looks at my shirt, which said Arcane wonders, because at that point I changed the branding of the company. I sit down and he goes, ah, you're with A-dub. And I was like, yes. and he leans into his like little, I guess, portfolio bag, pulls out a folder. And I open up the, I had my logo on the folder, the AW logo on the folder. And I open it up. And it was an entire presentation of why his game is good for my company.

And not why his game is good, but literally looking at these are the type of games you're making. This is the audience at which you're addressing your games to. And this is where my game would fit into that. And I remember closing it. I said, I don't need to see anything more. I'm happy to talk to you. Come to my booth at 2 o'clock. We're going to sit down and talk, right?

Yeah, love it. It was amazing that he put in that effort and that at homework to get that stuff done, right? Versus the opposite of just kind of like random drive-bys of, hey, Justin, do you have five minutes? Can we talk real quick? I'd love to show you my game. It's amazing. And by the way, I have a patent for it. Everything's okay.

Everything's great. There's so much difference in those two types of conversations, right? I always, always recommend the designers. Don't worry about pitching your game. You'll get there at some point or another. Worry about developing a relationship with the publisher. Worry about understanding, does your game actually fit that publisher? Am I wasting their time if I pitch them a game?

Like if I'm a game like, you know, if I'm a splotter spelling company that only makes high strategy euro resource games. and somebody comes to me with cross pose and catapults, not really the right fit, right? And maybe the best version of cross pose and catapults you've ever made on the planet Earth, but it's not necessarily the right fit, right? And I think being able to set up the back to the value discussion, if you have a relationship with a publisher, and this is not quick and it's not easy, it takes time.

But if you have a relationship with a publisher where you understand them and what they're trying to make and understand how your games fit in that ecosphere, you're going to have a much easier conversation. And really, at the end of the day, PIT is probably going to be five, ten minutes about the game. It's really going to be more about this designer knows what I'm looking for. They know what I want.

They know how to design and this is what I like, right? So the relationship side of it is much, much bigger in my opinion. Yeah, I often advise, you know, designers like success from a, you know, a pitch is not that somebody takes your game. game, it's that the door is open for you to continue the conversation. Like the ability for you to be able to have that say, hey, this is someone who understands, is not wasting my time, takes feedback with someone who I would want to work with. You will have other games.

You will have other opportunities. But if you just like try to bulldoze your way through and just take rather than give and show that you've put in the effort, then that door is going to close and you're not going to open it again. Yeah. And if you look at some of the companies that have continuously going back to the same designer multiple times, it's usually because they're trusted, right? From both directions, the designer trust that the company is going to treat their product

the way they want it treated. And the company trust the designer to work with them to create the product that they need to create. Yep. Great. Okay. Well, that does seem like a fantastic place to end it. We got some very actionable, great advice here.

And I want to give the floor to you, though, for people that want to follow your stuff, see cool games from you, hear more from you. where would be the best place to direct them? Even though I don't run it anymore, Critts Happen still exists. So you can just search Crits happen on Facebook, on X, on Instagram or anything, and find me there. The company, Lucky Duck Games,

obviously still keeping our brand and our name because that's an important thing. So you can just search Lucky Duck Games and find us on everything. I believe we're pretty much anywhere and everywhere. And for all I know, my marketing specialist has probably put us on some brand new thing that started this morning. Love it. No, man, listen, I always, cherish our conversations. I think you're one of the great people in the industry, both just for

your kindness, your willingness to share. You've added value and built relationships, not looking for something in return, but just because that's the kind of person that you are. And so it's been a real honor to have you as a friend and great to be able to share your insights with my audience. Oh, man, I appreciate it. I love you. I love everything you do. And I'm happy to be here anytime you need me. Okay. Well, then we'll be back again soon, I'm sure. All right. Thank you so much for listening. I hope you enjoyed today's podcast. If you want to support the podcast,

please rate, comment, and share on your favorite podcast platforms, such as iTunes, Stitcher, or whatever device you're listening on. Listen to reviews and shares with a huge difference and help us grow this community and will allow me to bring more amazing guests and insights to you. I've taken the insights from these interviews, along with my 20 years of experience in the game industry,

and compressed it all into a book with the same title as this podcast. Think Like a Game Design. In it, I give Step By, step instructions on how to apply the lessons from these great designers and bring your own games to life. If you think you might be interested, you can check out the book at think click at game designer.com or wherever find books or something.