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 ThinkLikeAGameDesigner.com.
In today's episode, I speak with Alex Yeager. Alex is a chief operating officer at Amigo Games. Prior to that, he has also served as event coordinator for Steve Jackson Games, had multiple leadership positions at Mayfair Games, including Vice President of Acquisition and Development, and the director of Special Media. He has been in the industry for a very long time, over 20 years of experience, and he brings that to bear in the episode. We talk about a lot of really great things, and because of his unique perspective, we're able to learn a lot.
We talk about what makes a great demo, and his formula for the TutuTo demo, how to pitch games to publishers, and what publishers decide on how they pick up games and what games they choose to do. We talk about what makes Amigo Games so successful, and how you build an Evergreen game, and what are the things that make it most likely to be successful, the importance of the social experience that is the core of what's happening, and the ease of transferring the fun.
We really talk a lot about not just how a game becomes Evergreen, but even the marketing efforts to bring back a game that used to be Evergreen and then failed, and then bring it back to life.
Bananza is a specific case story of this, where it was selling tens of thousands of units every year, went basically out of print, how they brought it back, how they brought it back to success, and then of course we've been applying some of that stuff to my own games, and the stuff we're doing with bringing all the ascension sets back to life.
He even gives me a little cool tip that I am 100% using, and you can use with your own games as you expand them, and try to build your own Evergreen brand. So tons of great value here. I love Alex, he's one of the kindest people I know we've chatted and been friends for a very long time, so it was great to get him finally on the podcast. I know you'll love him as much as I do, so without any further ado, here is Alex Yeager.
Hello and welcome, I'm here with Alex Yeager. Alex, so great to finally have you on the podcast. I know, this is terrific. Thanks for having me. We've had a lot of great chats over the years. You've been around the industry as long as pretty much anybody here. You've got a lot of different experiences that you bring to the background, but I realized that you'd already kind of were a veteran here before I kind of got into it.
I don't actually know your full origin story, so I'd love to know how you got into the space and what kind of started you down this crazy road that you've been on. Yeah, I think the short version, the kind of the long version of the short version, I was playing games through high school, Cosmic Encounter, and probably Illuminati were my two touchstones through that period and a lot of Euker, a lot of Euker.
But as we came up to 1995, 1996, Steve Jackson games released a collectible card version of Illuminati called Illuminati New World Order, and I went down that rabbit hole hard. I have a measurable percentage of the limited edition run of that game in my house. It was I was just absolutely went nuts for the game. And because of that, I got involved with Steve Jackson.
Steve Jackson was kind of one of the front runner companies that was using a like digital contacts using emails and forums to kind of bring people together and to talk about their stuff. So I began, you know, I became part of sort of the play test group and some folks that were doing information out there on that game in particular, and then by extension, some of other Steve Jackson games as well.
In 1997, they started their men in black demo program. I was one of the charter members of that was very active with that. That got me to shows semi professionally, which then led me to being one of the first from the founding demo monkeys for cheap ass games.
I was right there at the beginning of that process as far as, you know, for those folks that worked in the Seattle area, it was on the front edge of that. And then beyond that, you know, started to work with more and more companies, the CEO of Mayfair at the time, will kneeling, started attending our gaming groups in Ann Arbor in the early 2000s, started working with Mayfair a little bit, got hired by Mayfair full time in 2005 was with them.
You know, basically got hired on as a personal assistant slash general help and left there as a shareholder and and, you know, vice president of acquisition development. Once that, the once the company was sold, I spent a couple of years at Steve Jackson games as an actual employee. And then and eventually ended up with Amigo where I am now, where I'm COO, the basically the North American operation.
So COO is kind of a broad term for people like what is it that you'd say like your kind of core functions are as a COO because I think my experience is pretty different from company to company. It is very different in the sense that there are two people who work on the North American operations. So when you say it's a broad kind of category, it's a broad category. It's pretty much anything we need done. It's myself or my my my cohort, Cory, who has the title sales director.
So he does a lot of kind of day to day sales stuff he works with our Amazon working on our website currently getting that revised. But you know, a lot of like event planning is still me a lot of the, you know, when we do presentations, we go to shows that's still me. A certain amount of the marketing planning as we are ramping those activities up social media.
A lot of sustaining things in there, but and a little bit of product product pitching, not so much development anymore, but still can, you know, I still will take pictures of shows and forward those on to the mission to our folks in Germany is needed. So yeah, a little bit of everything. Yeah, so I love that. I mean, you've had the fact that you've had so much experience such a wide breath of the industry is one of the reasons why I was excited to have you on the podcast.
And I think in particular, you know, there's this challenge that exists now of game discovery, right that there's it's easier than ever to make games. The tools are available. The information is available all the kinds of things that, you know, I know I would have killed for when I was coming up and I'm sure, you know, you as well. It's so now, but the problem is that there's so much and the bar has been raised so much that it's very hard to kind of break through.
And so I'd love to hear and you can kind of tackle this from any of your roles or ideally we'll hit all of them, you know, as someone who is in charge of as a, you know, for a major company acquiring games, you know, what are the things that separate people in the pack or in terms of the company that's trying to launch games. What are the tools that you use to kind of, you know, make optimize your chances of kind of success and reaching the audience as you want to reach.
Sure, I think one of the things that I that I tell game designers a lot is that, you know, 15 years ago, if I was taking a pitch. There would be those times when I could literally, you know, the presentation will be over. I would say, I thank you so much. It was a pleasure meeting you on the way out the door. There's a trash can. You may put your prototype into it. We'll get some sunlight, never give this thing another thought again. Just, you know, it is behind the barn.
But as you say, there are so many tools for game designers nowadays, you know, between, you know, things like the unpubbs, proto spills, online forums, tools, you know, all of the things that are there. Nowadays, when an acquisition person at a company is looking at a game is the game good is just a check mark. I mean, if a game is not good, that means you literally haven't used any of the tools available to you and it's probably not going to be worth our while to take a meeting with you again.
You know, we assume and by extension, we see that most games that are out there right now are very, are perfectly adequate expressions of the game concepts, the player, you know, the designer has wanted to put in front of us. So it goes it immediately then goes past is it good is it very good and goes into what are the specific things that we as a company are looking for to put on our schedule in order to in order to for us to succeed. So now it's like are you at the right price point?
You know, is the materials that you've presented part of you know part of the toolkit of the factories that we typically work with or are we going to have to go find a new, a new, a new manufacturer for a particular component or to assemble something differently.
Is the kind of game or the theme of the game as we see it appropriate for the print win or for the release windows that we want for the products that we've got if you've got a game about flowers that's typically going to be a spring release and maybe our spring releases are full this time. Are we going to look at it? Are we going to delay it a year in order to get the best chance for us to launch it within a window that it's going to be appropriate for.
So you know the good news for designers is when you hear a no from a company that is that is increasingly over the years, meant less and less that your game is not publishable. It literally means this company is at this time is not ready for this design in their schedule and I think you know I think that repeating that message over and over again a lot of the designers who I've had contact with that we've done this with.
I've had at least you know you get the confidence that you know you can take it to multiple companies and know that even if you're hearing no again and again and again that may not be and shouldn't be considered a reflection of your design unless you're being told that it really is at this point. What company is going to be the best fit for your design to give it the best transfer success.
Yeah that's great insight and you know this is where I kind of advise a lot of people that I work with and new designers that you know success in a pitch is not your pitch your game gets accepted obviously it's great if that's true but success in a pitch is the doors open for you to come back in the future right you are somebody who has something is good enough designs and they.
It seems like a good enough person to work with that people will take more pitches from you in the future that's a big win in your early stages and so having making sure that you have a certain bar of quality before you go and pitch and then related to what you talked about making sure that you did your research right that you know that the person you're pitching to what kinds of games do they make how does your game fit into their portfolio right if it's not if it's a complete mister you can't speak to it at all then it shows I think a lack of preparation and waste the time of the publisher which means again you're less likely to be able to.
Again you're less likely to be able to come in and pitch are there other ways I mean you know so for me I would recommend people go to the websites for the publishers they want to publish find games that are you know in the category of the game you're trying to make and ideally be targeting those people are there other tools that you would recommend people to make sure that they optimize the chance that their pitches are to the right people or that they can help find the.
The right you know audience for their particular genre game sure the you know something like board game because the tremendous tool that's available and you can do things like search on age levels.
Search on mechanisms you know be able to kind of you know search on game weight and look at you know if you do that filter within a specific timeframe you can find those folks who are today or within the last 12 or or you're 12 or 24 months that perhaps are producing games that look like the kind of game that you you created and so that's a great starting way to kind of filter through and find a lot of the different companies that are out there that you may not have heard of the you know you can do that.
You may not have contact with but that you would have that that capability to take a look at your stuff. You know going well when we go for example to UK games expo the number of companies that kind of flip the script where you know you see them they they on companies have big big
booths or big big presence is at a US show and suddenly they're the ones that are in the 10 by 10 and these other companies are over there with the 10 by 20s and the 20 by 20s and you know representing that they have a much larger presence in Europe also means that if you have the opportunity to go to an SN or to a UK games expo or look at the manufacturing list for the dealers room at a UK games expo which is much cheaper to be able to look at and say hey here's a bunch of companies I've maybe
never heard of or that have a much larger presence there than I would have expected why is that look at their product line and discover the yeah they have a much a much broader you know perhaps representation of products they need to see in the US so it's so much of it is information gathering and looking for tools like board
game lists like dealer room lists be able to be able to find find those games that look like yours that potentially would give you possible targets for for pitching your game and and the other thing to remember is that you've got you know you look at a list of of you know I was just it was interesting I was talking with one of the folks from AEG this week and Johnson's used to have a blog blog post which have been taken down since I would love to see them come back up
but one of them was discussing the AEG process and this was from 2019 but how they go from the 1250 or so pitches they receive a year down to two products and it walks through it at each step you know 50% of those products are rejected off the cell sheet and so that means your cell sheets fairly important you know they'll take another 40% off the top based on video presentation so perhaps you need to work on your video stuff to be able to do that so it's a me finding the finding the different
possibilities you have to pitch but then doing the due diligence to make your presentation of your materials the best you can without spending a tremendous amount of money or $1,000 to the dollars on a video you know just well light your kitchen table put your your iPhone your iPhone on there and set it up on a tripod so it's not wobbling all over the place and do it and that's that's
you know usually good enough to release to express your concepts even if those concepts are later just not accepted by the company yeah yeah I but the way I think about it is like when you're trying to get a game ready to pitch right you're spending you know at months and months and months maybe years iterating and you know looping and getting yourself to a place where the game is good enough
you should spend you know at least 10% of that time trying to get your pitch in a good place right you want to make sure that you're in a place where you're representing it well and again that comes with practice right so for those people out there they're not necessarily feeling comfortable with it you know there's you know the more you pitch the better you get it the more you're able to model I think we have a
cel sheet guide I think like a game designer dot com the people can download to that will help give some tips on it but basically it's just a matter of giving information in a clear way and starting to present it and ideally if you're with your coaching the right publishers and your building relationships you're able they'll be giving feedback on stuff that you know how you can improve and how you can get better so that all makes sense.
There's another another you know one of the things I'm looking I'm actually prepping my my seminar schedule for gamma expo right now and one of the things we're going to be doing is going to be a seminar on demos and talking about the variety of demos that exist and one of the probably you know 12 or 13 years ago I was at gamma talking about a thing called the 2 2 2 demo
which was you know so often you would have a demo person from a company that would come into a store and be super excited about the game and the retailer is there like well it's nice to have somebody who can show the game to the public and all that but the person that that demo person is prepared to teach the game and to play the game and unfortunately it's it's a grandmother that's just walked up and said what is this and you're going to start
launching into the overview and the way a turn works and it doesn't work so the 2 2 2 demo is basically you need to have 3 demos for your game at all times you need to have the 2 cent and demo are you going to describe your game in 2 sentences and then gauge interest if they're still interested go to the 2 minute demo this is the overview how it works maybe mechanisms how you win
access the audience make sure they're still interested and then if you've got the time and the and the interest you can move on to the 2 play demo so you know as a and as a as a game for pitching your games that tomb that 2 cent and demo is literally the time it takes for lots of you know for lots of folks in the evaluation part of the industry to know whether or not your game is is interesting
you literally have 60 to 90 seconds to get the attention of somebody who you are pitching to and what you say in that first 60 seconds is absolutely critical to whether or not they are going to you know and of course someone like I have always said I always want to do the Ironman pitch I'd be a show we'd have a table they'd be sitting over here I'd be over here and my arm would be down over here out of sight and the moment you know I would basically have it open and the moment I've
rejected this pitch I would make the fest and the audience would see it that they would and then it's it's all about can I maintain interest can I you know can I give you a legitimate interest in the product that you're presenting even though I know right now the rest of this presentation about this game is not relevant to my company and the things that we're going to publish
but again you're right after that this is just the conversation that opens up the relationship that eventually may lead to a game that we are going to do together. Yeah, yeah, I love this sort of multi demo process the 222 is a great a great frame for me that two sentence thing is the you know I've referred to as the elevator pitch and I think there's nothing more important for your game and I believe this is not just the case for trying to sell your game by the way
like I think as you are early in design you should be crafting your elevator pitch so you know what your game is supposed to deliver off right like what is it that's exciting if you can't say something it's exciting about your game even in the early stages then it's not a game like it's not something you're going
to be able to say okay this is what it's going to be about it's going to be about this quick fast you know secretive term play and stabbing your friend in the back and it's like okay cool so that's the emotion I'm looking for now does this thing deliver and either the game has to evolve to match the pitch or vice versa it's like actually you know what the fun really is this sort of more strategic kind of you know cooperative thing okay cool
we'll shift it over that way and so I think people should be working on their elevator pitch from the very very beginning of the process and then obviously you know evolve as it goes so I think it's nothing more important I want to shift the perspective now because again you've taken this from both sides the all right as a publisher here I am I know what I'm looking for generally the categories I'm looking for and I'm going to take in
pitches and we're going to filter through those pitches and go through this process of getting it down to something that we're going to select but I want to dig into what how do you as a publisher decide what things you're looking for how do you see what trends are happening in the game industry or how do you care about what trends are happening in the game industry like you've already mentioned some things like we have you know what kind of factories do what we have
experience with one of their factors come into play in terms of when you're trying to decide what projects are worth doing what projects do you want to grow into as a company or you know etc. So it's you know I think I think there is a certain amount of of danger in focusing on what's hot thematically you know it's hard to say hey anytime you say hey you know people really like llamas right now let's let's do the llama game or let's re-skin
as llamas and whether or not that's going to be relevant six months 12 months two years you know no one knows but it's probably not it's it's always more interesting to take the game and look at it from a mechanism standpoint to say is this a mechanism that feels fresh that feels
new in the case of amigo when we talk about you know that we have these four logos we put on the back of all our family games and the first one is five rules or less and if you fit if you can do your game with five rules or less what you're going to find is that becomes a much more universally interesting or acceptable set of rules then something that takes four pages or eight pages or 20 pages you're going to have more sustainability
you're going to have those people that can play the game can understand the game can teach that game to the next group of people down the line without a lot of stress or without delaying you know having to read a rule book verbatim you know that idea of transferring that information becomes much simpler if all you've got a three or four rules to communicate then an entire rule book that you as a as a consumer may not be the best person to present those rules to the next group that comes along
so anything you know so when we're looking at those games we're looking at those games that feel sort of have that iconic vibe of simple to play the complexity is in the interaction and the emotions that it created and not so much in defining the experience through the use of a rule so a lot of what we do is try to make things feel relatively timeless isn't maybe the right word
because we're always looking to you know you still have to refresh your covers and make it look relevant to to to a current time but on the other hand you know you look at you know we also as you know amigos a great example of a company that has as really I think captured a formula captured an awareness of what they do well and have produced you know you
and any company would be happy to have it evergreen in take five or no thanks or saboteur or bananza or llama and all three of the all five of those rather our games we have you know and have been selling the case of like take five for 30 years you know that's a generational evergreen that's when we you've got people teaching their kids or teaching their you know they're grand you all of those all that's in play and again the simpler the game is the easier it is to have that
teaching experience and be a be a positive yeah we don't focus on you know so we don't have to focus on theme we just have to focus on on the play ability and the transfer ability of that in from of the game to other other players again I had this conversation with a designer while back is that we're not sometimes you have to step back and realize that you're not trying to sell a game to somebody you're trying to sell them a social experience
game that you're presenting is going to create a framework that will allow them to have a social experience with a group of their choice and ideally that should be positive and so when you're thinking about it in those terms it's less about does the game work but it becomes will they have fun how easy is it for them to have fun and how easy is it for them to transfer that fun to another group or to other people that are playing those games so you know
thinking about it in terms of what social experience are you providing and again for us at an amigo you know we have found over the years that simplification of the process of the rules set you know making it a smaller more compact more directed game allows us to be able to have that transfer of social
fun much quicker than perhaps other games right yeah well so this this idea of creating the evergreen game is is it you know it's kind of the gold standard for everybody here right everybody that's the you want the game is going to be played for decades right I mean essentially it's going to be celebrating it's 15 year anniversary next year which is pretty exciting but it's not 30 years and you know the question is what is it and and you know it's like one of those things where
to some extent feels a little bit like lightning in a bottle when you catch these things and get it to be that kind of catch on things so you know making it simple with you know making it easy for people to teach others being focused on the core social experience
it sounds like an essence you know by less components less price point helps decent amount within a range are there other things that you would say contribute to increase the likelihood of success or something coming into a evergreen status so so you know going back a couple of steps to something you know to the games that I you know when I was with may fair and and by extension got to you know work with a lot of the look out folks and you know so now we have something like a
greek law which is definitely not a five rules or less game but absolutely has had sustained evergreen success over time then it then a lot of that becomes what are you doing what energy are you bringing to it to give it a reason to still be relevant five years seven years ten years down the line you know that can be as simple as expansions but as well I think there's a certain amount of of understanding when you have something that's at that level
and understanding that there is a certain amount of marketing that is still required to maintain that relevancy to maintain that awareness in the in the industry you know look out every year at Essen would produce this deck of cards for a greek law that were always pictures of the staff or people they wanted liked and it was just this fun little weird deck that would that they built on every year
and that you know so I've got an a greek law card with my face on it that's an actual playable greek law card you can put in there but again it was it was a case where people would get so excited and would you know find that look out booth and you know they wanted to be part of the tribe they wanted to have those cards a special cards they wanted to go get you know even back when when I was when
look out was just a thing that I was interested in you know I would always be aligned to the Essen booth because they'd have the little 1500 piece financial expansion that they did and that was you know once a year they would have this weird little deck they would sell off and and because you know and so through those little things even if they weren't court of the game even if they weren't even necessary for the game
there was still that drum beat of hey this is really cool here's this little thing we're doing you should come check us out you should come play it again and maybe if you buy the deck you know take it home so pick it home so pick it you'll play it again for maybe it's the first time in a while you know I mean you say ascension's going on on 15 years and you know I'm I'm sitting there at that booth every
gencon you know that gencon it's like okay what's new promo cards since the last time you know since I've gencon and you know here's your 15 20 bucks whatever it is and I have to go home and I have to open up all the boxes to put the
game in the so I've touched your game again I've got it out I go I remember that she played this you know and and that's that's sustaining the game that's what it takes to kind of keep that in that excitement and and and keep that environment around your game where people kind of go yeah I'm part of the tribe I'm this is cool this is what I want
yeah yeah this is this is great and so I want to dig dig deeper into the broader concept of how you know we market to maintain relevancy and so there's you know we've mentioned you mentioned a couple things that definitely make sense here right obviously full scale expansions for game smaller scale promo cards and new content new ways to play.
You've also mentioned having a presence it shows and I and which is you know I have mixed feelings on you know we was it was my no brainer this is how I market this is how I reach people before covid covid change that equation quite a bit in a lot of ways the way that you reach people in the way that people expect to discover and purchase now is a lot more online the trends not as strong as it was then but still still shifted and I don't think and then you know there's other variations of
like how much you should be marketing to stores and you know we used to send a sent promo cards stores through distribution every time we did a new release and that stop being as effective as it used to be and so we now more distributed direct consumer and so I'm curious what other things you see as critical to marketing either for the launch of a new game or for the kind of extension of a new game and how you think about that resource expenditure
because it's a lot right making new content constantly is and keeping relevant is a lot of work right so it's a how do you decide where we're portion that so a lot of questions there you can take a bite at whichever one you like sure so amigo amigo actually in a sense has kind of a strong strategy that the you know with their games and one being hobby market and kind of maintaining and just you know the folks who play games and and are interested in the games we have and we publish a lot of
games that are very much relevant to that audience and very much you know kind of up their alley then we also have specially toys we have buyer groups that we work with the take our stuff and directly market into specialty toys and that's a very different market it's a very different mix of products so I know our number one seller into that market is a game called
plaque and that's a game that probably 99% of the hobby market will have never heard of and the reason for that it's just a simple magnetic match in game for kids five and up and it works really well and it's a lot of fun and families and kids love the game and love the little you know the pieces and the magnet magnets and all that sort of thing but it's just it's not even on the radar of
hobby market at all so now I have you know so over here there's this evergreen game that we've got that requires its own kind of marketing and its own attention that does not transfer over to the hobby market as it's not a game that's really relevant to that audience and then of course you have you know your broad market mass market big box sort of stuff which is which is literally about you know basically getting it
placed showing enough success with the product that they're interested in it and then at the time of release to be able to have enough kind of low key marketing out there to kind of make there make there be an awareness is one of those things we really found with Katan is that you know when we were selling out with
Mayfair is that we didn't have to go out and do a whole bunch of marketing you know when you say hey we're going to put Katan into target there was this drum beat already so Katan you know little articles pop up we'd always make sure every time we did like the world championships you know we were to be out there promoting the national championship doing a new story with whatever the you know the newspaper was that area you'd see it pop up on on a you know big bang theory
or something like that and you just you have this little drum beat of Katan Katan Katan Katan and then you see it on a target shelf and it's like oh hey I've heard some stuff about that game let's find out what it's about that's really expensive to do all of that all the time and do it well you know we one of the things with Amigo is we've had we've had some challenges this year has been really focused on us getting our Amazon presence kind of back up to
that's pretty blunt to say but really that's kind of where we were at with the win and we're still working on getting that that done because with all this marketing you have to have a call to action you have to have you know hey this is this great game and you get it
and where you get it is you know it's great if you send us Amazon you send them to your local retailer you send them to target wherever it might be there's got to be that place for it to for them to go find that game and that is really you know one of the things especially with ever green it's something that was really driven home to us with bananza which really fell off the market for about four years where literally we went from you know tens of thousands of copies of that base game to zero.
And bringing that back you literally had a four or five year gap of store owners that had never sold it had no emotional attachment to it players who had never found it and so bringing that back of kind of doing that drumbeat of bananza you know trying to get bananza back to awareness back to
front of mind you know we've recovered that business for the most part but it is a map it's much easier for us to maintain a low drumbeat that it is for that to drop off and then try to recover it you know through through a lot more marketing a lot more time and a lot more money.
You know can we get granular can we get granular on that one because I think that's like a really interesting story like that this is a popular game that you know did well it suddenly fell off and I'm curious if you have any theories as to why and then what specifically to create that drumbeat and ideally ranges of understanding like budgeting and everything because like this is the stuff that I think I really want to demystify as part of this podcast like okay create a steady
drumbeat it's kind of expensive it's something you kind of have to average like let's yeah how can we can we just like parse this out a little bit so I think it's a great case study. Sure so so bananza I think really kind of started to drop off on sales and let's just a quick quick bananza give me your two sentence version of bananza just for people that don't know it so you can get it.
So the game is 27 years old was it's an uve Rosenberg design it's not as first but it's one of his earlier designs and it is it is to this day and again I sold Katan for a very long time. I'm an answer still the best trading and negotiation game on the market today effectively you are being farmers you are growing beans you are harvesting beans for money and whoever is the most money at the game at the end of the game wins.
Simple concept yeah I love this game by the way yeah I'm going to just I'll be part of your drumbeat because I think it's really fun and really fascinating and and one of the reasons I say it's one of the best trading games is because there are there are not there are multiple metrics by which you would trade it can be I am getting something of value.
I will put my hand I can be getting rid of something out of my hand because of the fixed hand thing for those that don't know in that in that game you do not change the order of cards in your hand cards come in the back they play out of the front you can't change that order unless you trade with other players I will tell you the one downside of this game is if you are a magic pro magic player it is the hardest thing in the world to not shuffle your hands.
This was the thing that we learned as pro magic players you are intentionally would shuffle your hands so that your opponent couldn't track which cards you drawn when and sort of deduce what was going on and so we just all have this habitual shuffle a thing which I know is a lot of people and I had to like train myself to stop for bananza but other than that perfectly.
And very much it's it's a game that even when we talk about you know concealing information it's not a game where you really have to do that I'll be super public and say I've got this today I want it anyway I'm looking for this because I need this this or these other two things that are in my hand and I'll trade so so the the point being is that there is a lot of opportunities for win win trading in the game.
It is very much a game where the person who trades the most is likely going to be the winner of the game and so ultimately you have you have an incentive to to do these active friendly trading as part of the game in order to succeed but it also means that everyone's kind of engaged with the game and everyone is feeling you know you feel good about a trade you know because you're getting something and even though they're getting something out of it there's not that evaluation of saying well I got 60% of the value of the game.
60% of the value of the trade they got 40% of the value of trade so I won or I lost you know really when you're talking about all those metrics it really does really provides the opportunity for win win trading unlike most other games on the market. So we know we know why why bananza is cool so at some point it takes off it's doing tens of thousands of years here and then at some point that stops. Do we know why do we know what happened there what was your theory.
It was pretty much the previous the previous licensee it just was no longer a relative it was no longer relevant in their catalog. So so ultimately we took the license back you know 2018 was when amigo games the us operation restart you know started up and the first thing they try to do is pull back as many of these licenses as they could because ultimately amigo is going to tell the story of their own games better than a licensee.
Licensee can be excited about them and all that but there are other business reasons and relevancies that may come up.
And in this case this was just a game that kind of went follow and we brought it back in we republished it we put it out there and suddenly discovered that it wasn't moving the way we thought it would be moving and you know in investigation you know this was the story we were being told by by retailers that or just the story being that they didn't know what the game was that this was a game that needs to be.
The story needed to be told a little more actively than just it exists you know by your three or four copies every how do you how do you go about telling that story. Sure so couple ways we did it number one you know we were very active in making sure that we were out you know it shows that bananas it was front and forward in our booth in our booth information in the demos that we did in making sure that we were to play the wins that that bananas it was always part of that mix.
Getting that out for you know to in people's hands for shows so suddenly it would be a there again invisible and playing it. A certain amount of you know kind of you know doing some of our banner ads and some things like that and and then and then we also made an interesting choice about a year and a half ago. To start going down the road of a new edition of the base game called dolly a bateman of dolly is which was exactly the regular game of bananas.
Except that we've rescinded it with dolly us with art from Beth Sobel. And it looks really pretty it's beautiful pictures of dolly dolly of flowers and. You know even even even within a me go there was a little drum beat of you know why do we do this is our number one seller why would we need a new base game and. The reality is this within the hobby market it's a great game and every replace it because it's a great game and the artist kind of cute and humors.
In in the rest of the world what we're trying to do is pitch a game that is based on German puns with a German pun in the title with this cartoon art. And no real reference to what it is or how it works where there's there's a particular illustration they're called the blue bean the the blower bonus and you know as a US person you look at it you go okay it's a blue bean with a cowboy hat and get six tutors okay you know whatever.
In Germany blah. Blowbohna is a is a colloquial term for a gun cartridge and there was a whole set of westerns in like the 70s you know blah. Blowbohna for how are you from blah. And so you know Germans look at that all that's clever that's the gun that the movies and and all the things like that none of which zero of which. You know makes any translation to the US and so dolly is was our opportunity to bring awareness to the game into things like the specialty market that.
Literally rejecting the game based on the way it looks from the cover but suddenly now had a version of it that had all the great game inside but looked appropriate looked like it was something that belonged on their shelf.
So finding ways to take you know what is effectively a very good game but making it you know both aware you making sure that that presence is there every time you put out every time you go to a show every time you go to the show every every every opportunity to have that game there but then also finding ways to extend those extend markets.
As that success is happening as you're seeing those games wrap up in numbers to be able to say it and it hears this new thing that will that will service your market in particular to make that work so. And so so banana was out so this is this great so a lot of time it was shows and demos and putting it out there renew release that would you know with a potentially new twist that can help and reach new audiences.
You said that it was kind of out of sales for like four to five years and you took the license back in 2018 so it was how long did it take you and. I ballpark I guess of how much of this is because like having some shows and presence of boost and taking it that's basically it's not it's not cheap like what was the what was the time to get that you know up and running again and what was a kind of investment that it felt like it took before you could kind of you know start to see return.
So the timeline the timeline was really you know we saw that the you know we started in 2018 and that's when the beginning of the process of trying to get this stuff back happened. We did not get it back until 2020 and the first new addition of of bananas that have the amigur logo exclusively on it was 21 so that that that that group that that you know from 2017ish to 2021ish.
It represents the time at which that license really was fallow and so we know so really in 21 that's when we had to start doing this and we knew we knew in a sense especially coming out of the pandemic.
We had this opportunity a lot of people were looking at games a lot of people were you know there's this just you know people are our online and they're looking at stuff we have those people are just the front edge of shows starting to come back come back around again and so all of that stuff we just wanted to make sure we were we were in the mix.
For any time you know me go at least has the always that comfort of it as he is a brand is something people pay attention to and it was just a matter of us being able to say hey if you're paying attention to us or if you run into us.
Bananza is something that you need to remember and redefine it as it's ours now you know but be able to say hey here's this game again time to pay attention to it again yeah well I mean obviously I'm I'm I'm particularly interested in the subject because you know I think we talked about this before but I you know I've gone through the exact same process with the sentient right we had our whole of our brands were licensed to ultra pro for five or six years and.
At you know not that they not just anything to spare you with them but they have their own you know business line it wasn't as much of a priority for them is it's going to be for me obviously it's my baby and we only just got those licenses back a little
very ago and so we've been in that exact process of like okay how do we reintroduce this game wasn't sales were you know zero but they weren't where they were before I handed that license off and so it's been a process of trying to reintroduce it to the world.
Reloading bringing you know we have over 16 different expansions so trying to bring all of those back into print and which ones and how do we do that has been a has been an interesting journey as well and it's been rewarding a lot of ways because there's a lot of people who love the game and who've been waiting for the exact this but in other ways we're trying to you know
reestablish and and kind of grow into new audiences and so this is something that's very close to my heart I'm very focused on right now sure and I think I think ascension and and here I am going to talk about your game as if as if I'm teaching you something but like with Katan we always put a Katan family tree in the game which was basically hey start here now you have this now you have that you know something like you know what's the difference between see fairs and cities and
nights cities you know see fairs is that going to add a lot more rules going to give you boats which are like roads but it's going to give you a lot of different scenarios to play cities and nights no we're going to add an hour and a half and a whole nother layer of resources and we're going to make it more crunchy and if that's what's interesting go this way otherwise go that way you know and and with you know with
something like ascension you know in my head you know so for when I fire up the app it's like bang it's the first two sets the dream born sets you know those are the ones that I immediately want to start playing because those are the I don't necessarily the dies it's something I'll play not right away though it's like I'm certainly not going to play that
with somebody new you know I have the big monster sets with all the promos and everything in it and then when I'm carrying around as the 10th anniversary edition because it's it's it's again it's the way that I I learned about the game and the game is great but it also is the best expression of that first set that's out there you know you've got Runeck Lyckman throw cosmen you know magically oh it's you night now it's not this you know I played before or after you know all of that
stuff I think you know you've got 10 years of experience that suddenly is available and as in this beautifully accessible package and that's you know that's what I want people if I'm teaching the game that's what I'm showing them right off the bat so you know it's thinking about your game and they're thinking about your line in the sense of you know how do I want people to see this thing you know in
Carcassone you probably don't want people to see Princess in the dragon until they have a whole lot of experience under their belt before they have something that's running around and kicking people out and and doing things like that you know what is you know what what what benefits are being brought to the to the game with an expansion or with a standalone set what complexities are being included and being able to talk about that define that for an audience is critical I think and that's the
process again you're you're on the front edge of and I'm looking forward to see what you do with yeah so you literally just to be clear you literally would have a kind of Katan family tree like insert in the box to let people know hey here's the things you could go here's where we recommend you go next if you're into this kind of thing go here if
you're into this time of thing go here and that would just be an insert that they would have that you would have in the box every set of Katan that was sold okay that's I'm just taking that and using that right away so thank you we just finished a crowd fund for which for those listening is late pledges are available on a game pound but we did where we where we did bring our entire back catalog into you know we're
bringing it back in print for the first time so that was the first time anybody's ever had actually in over a decade that we've had everything in print and so it won't be available at retail until next year but that's the perfect time for us to be introducing this exact kind of thing which I hadn't thought of before so thank you I'm I'm getting direct immediate useful benefit out of this.
So let's let's shift gears then and then I'm curious about you know you've already talked about your demo 222 principle but you have an enormous amount of experience running demos teaching people how to demo demo demo you know that like what makes things what makes a great demo so I understand the two you know what makes a great elevator pitch 2 seconds demo I understand you know well we can talk a little bit about the 2 minute demo
but I really want to because this is something I focus a lot of energy on is training new staff training people and I also love to bring my design team I make sure everybody does a rotation and demoing at events because there's nothing better to help you realize how much every single rule and complexity has to justify itself that happy to demo game there's so many things that when you're playing the game you're
designing the game you like I know this is obvious of course everybody's going to know this it is so far from obvious so so how would you recommend how do you think about demoing training demos making games optimize for demoing what's what what insights can you bring to the bear here.
Sure so so one of the things I am so again I am not a designer you know for the most part the couple of designs I have under my belt are things that got stuck in my head and just frustrated me and I got them done on a piece of paper and so that I didn't have to think about the many more get back to my job.
But because of that I have those you know I sort of you know you get the reason that those games existed in the first place because there was some part of it that I thought was just too cool or too interesting as a mechanism and that's the thing that if you were to become a game it would be the thing I want to share with the world.
And so finding that in your game in the game that I'm going to present to the public is always first and foremost what is the fun of the game I use that question when I'm getting pitched to game I use that question during development and I use that as part of a demo so
obviously what is you know how do I win which is fun and what's what's fun am I going to have on my way to the win itself. From there you are rehearsed you are rehearsed you are rehearsed again you go through the process where you take the little random bits out and you make it a positive presentation then you go past that to the point where it doesn't sound like you are reading off a script that you have done and make it feel natural and inviting to people.
So you get into the game, you talk about how you're going to win, you're going to talk about those elements that, how the process, how it turns going to work. If at all possible, break things down to sets of three. So I'm going to teach you this or this or this or this or this. More than that, you have a play aid. And the play aid goes there and then you reference the play aid because I don't want to teach five. You're not going to remember five different things. Two is good.
Three can get away with after that play aid sits down the table next to the next to the player. So a little reminder cards or just things that people can look and reference basically. There's a new thing that I, you know, it's always good to be kind of reminded that there are always things for you to learn in this industry. Rick Lang recently released a couple of games with life in Riterra with, with Hasbro and I love Manatees.
And one of the interesting things that, that he brought up and I really kind of have taken to heart in the last few months is that when you look at his rule books, he has deliberately and, you know, successfully pulled out all jargon, pulled out all the things that you require
you to have previous knowledge of games, game industry, mechanisms, all those sorts of things, especially because in something the case of life in Riterra, if it's a Hasbro game, it's going to probably find itself into a house that is maybe buying a Hasbro baby because they have monopoly and they don't have, they don't know what a trick is.
They don't know what, you know, there are lots of those terms that he has deliberately taken out of his rule books to write in plain English in order to be able to quickly communicate the concept that doesn't require you to have previous information. And so, when I'm, you know, so, and so now I'm thinking about my demo is a little differently to say, you know, am I using jargon? Am I using something that requires the person across the table from you to know what a deck builder is?
To know what a meeple is, to know what, you know, a trick or whatever that might be, you know, structure, structuring the demos so that you're using plain language that is understandable to anyone regardless of your level of demo. Now, if you're demoing as a big game, yes, you can, you know, someone comes to a greekola, one's going to assume they have some experience in gaming in general and maybe there's some shorthand you can use there.
But as you're practicing your demo, it's important to realize that you're going to have a wide audience in front of you and the wider it is, the more you need to make your language plane to present it to somebody. Yeah, yeah, this is a big thing for me. So when I have demos, and now I've got, God knows how many demos under my belt, especially of the core games I work on, I have this sort of demo tree that I'm planning, right?
Like if I know, like, oh, hey, have you played any deck building games before? If yes, go down this path, if no, go down this path, you know, have you done these? And so you can kind of like, you know, some judgment of just like when you see somebody, you can kind of know, get a sense of their experience level and then just ask a couple key questions.
And then it's like, okay, you, I can use jargon and jump to here and you're going to get interested in some of the unique misses and you, I'm going to have to do this in very plain language, just kind of get you going. And then, you know, we'll get it from there. And I found there's like in different games, there's the, how quickly can you get them to the, to the aha moment, right? The thing where they're like, oh, cool. I get it. Like, how, what's the gap between your teaching ability and that?
How many things can you, and then as I'm referencing, kind of, I just said like, how many of those things can I defer teaching until later? Because once I've got you past that, like, ooh, moment, then you'll be with me a lot longer and I can explain more and I can do more.
But if I, every single thing I have to like teach you or walk you through or you have to kind of every barrier that's between you and the like, oh, wow, this is kind of cool, is a, is, is you're going to lose like huge segments of your audience. So it's a very, very conscious of that. There's, you know, and you have, there's a bigger point I'll make here in a second. You know, and there's also being aware of the game itself and what you have on a table in front of somebody.
I mean, again, if I'm doing a demo, my everything about that demo is stacked. I know the card that's on top. I next to know the next four cards. I'm going to be able to fluidly go through that, that turn and it's going to be the optimal way for my cards to come out to present it. I'm going to make sure that there are no toys are within arms reach.
I'm always, you know, I remember for years, I would teach cash and guns, which is a game another company did and the primary conceit there is you're going to quentin Tarantino film and the primary prop you have is a foam gun that you will point at somebody. And they're like, I'm going to try and teach this game. And if those guns are on the table, that's it. It's going to be five minutes before I have a chance to get any of these attention back enough.
So like that stays under the table in the box and you say, getting to an aha moment, it's like, okay, so we're going to put money on the table. We're going to talk about this, you're going to choose a card. And then you're going to take your foam gun and bam, I've got everyone's attention immediately. But I think it comes to the larger point and the important point, which is, and this is challenging for some people in the game industry.
I know games are one of the reasons I is really the development of my social abilities, going from someone who didn't do a lot of friends and didn't do all that in high school, really D&D and the friends that I made with games to a certain extent really helped bring me some sense of how to act in social situations and how to become better at those interactions. A good demo person is going to be able to read the social cues that are at the table. Are people interested? Are they not interested?
Are they not interested because they're looking at components? Are they not interested because your presentation isn't good? All of those things are the things where if you need to bail and get the game going just to kid people occupied, even if they're going to play sub optimally, sometimes that's what you have to do. But you have to be aware of the people who are in front of you.
And not just kind of, I've got to get through my script and everyone's, I'm losing everybody, but I've still got a whole page to get out. You just have to read the room, you have to read people and be able to say, okay, so let's go ahead and get things going. And I've got some more things to talk about. We'll get to those when we get to them.
Yeah, well, that skill of that kind of intuition of being able to read people and understand when they're engaged, when they're disconnected, what those checkout moments are, how you can bring them back, whether it be with a prop like a gun or the shiny beads in a sentient or just kind of showing something cool that's happening or just drawing them in, helping them walk through some steps. That stuff is a skill that's really worth developing because it's not just about demoing.
It's really about like being able to evaluate your game at a deeper level, right? And so what I encourage people to do that are out there, even if you don't have a game right now or something to demo, when you're playing games, when you're playing other games, start paying attention to where those emotional moments are happening, start paying attention
to when other people are checking out how those things are happening or if you're teaching just something else's game, what are those moments, where are those things and use that as a practice tool for that when you want to be, you know, demoing or pitching your own
game to really kind of hone in those instincts because I definitely have seen those experiences where I'm like, I know I'm losing you right now, so I got to kind of hail Mary and bring you back in and I've been able to save demos that I'm sure if I wasn't as paying attention, I would have lost if I was going off on a script.
And that's something that yes, it is, you know, some people have a, you know, can indately do that, can, you know, you have that, pick up on those social cues quickly, but for those that, you know, it's, but it's a skill and it's a skill that you learn with practice and the skill you learn by putting yourself in situations where you have the opportunity to do that. So yeah. Okay. So let's, I think I got time for maybe one more cool topic here. There's a million things.
That's why I love having guests like you on the podcast. I love all of our conversations, but outside the podcast because you just have such a wide breath of experience. And I think it just, people don't, people underestimate the value of that. Like it's for me, and many times where I lament, my role as a CEO because it takes away from my time to design games. Right.
I don't get to spend as much time on games as I, as I used to, but it gives me such a broader perspective to evaluate and, and, and, and make games with a bigger context. And, and you have, you bring so much context into everything that you do. So the other piece that's been, I've put a lot of, you know, it gets a lot of attention now as sort of content creation, right?
Specifically, you know, now, you know, streaming and, you know, unboxing videos and working with influencers and creating your own content and TikTok. And I mean, there's a million things that now all of a sudden could take all the hours in the day. And, you know, you've created a lot of different types of content over the years. You've worked with a lot of content creators over the years.
How do you think about how publishers and creators should be approaching content creation in terms of both, you know, their discovery product, product discovery as well as, you know, teaching and kind of, and keeping their game relevant? So interestingly, this is something that that I'm really kind of coming to with coming to with fairly fresh eyes, you know, this year in particular.
You know, we, we've been doing kind of sustaining work in the social media area until we had, again, a place for our calls of action to end up. So you know, I'm spending a lot of time right now thinking about what those next steps are, what do we want to do as a company to be able to really, you know, effectively market our stuff? And yeah, I mean, we've, we've done some really weird stuff over the years. You know, I wrote a, I wrote a puppet show for sheep for 1,5 years for Mayfair.
And it's still, you know, it still warms my heart to think that, you know, there are those, those people that know me either as, as the, as a disembodied voice of, of, of a lover, who was our white glove, you know, movies, our white glove demos thing at Mayfair, or, you know, was the, was the guy that brought sheep to life, you know, every week as part of, as part of that, that, that broadcast. You know, those were, those were things that were a lot of fun to do. They had real value.
They, they brought things in a different way. My degree is video radio broadcasting. So I have, for better or for worse, a certain level standard of what I want to see in videos. I'm not super excited about the kitchen table stuff. I don't, I don't like an hour and a half of people saying, um, and, uh, and kind of dithering around, you know, a, a topic. I prefer my scripted stuff and I think it's more effective to have scripted stuff.
Um, I, I like the idea of those people that are excited about your games as influencers who want to do stuff with your games. I also believe you as a company have to have a way of presenting your voice as part of those things as well. It can't always be a me go games presented by this other person. It has to be a me go games and here's, here's our stuff. Um, and, and people are looking for that stuff, even if you're not necessarily producing that content.
So you are being defined by what's out there, whether you created or not. So putting some time into creation is really important. Um, I love the idea of TikTok. It's exactly the kind of thing that I would do if I had unlimited time and I had a person who was in charge of everything that I'm in charge of, you know, I would just sit in, I would do that for a day that you need to be relevant on TikTok and could do that humor stuff.
Uh, you know, that, that stuff, you know, that stuff would be a lot of fun to do, but it's all, it's not just creating that content, but it's an interacting with your community that you build through that. And that's the thing that, you know, I learned probably the most, uh, at Mayfair with the, the stuff that we did was that it's not just a, I've produced a cool thing and now it's out in the world.
It's now people want to talk to you about that cool thing and you've got to be available and, and, and approachable and pleasant about that no matter what, you know, interaction they've got. So, you know, and you've got those people that are always going to hate your stuff. There's a guy, you know, there's a guy online for like 20 years has been abusing me for my voice. It's just, I'm an awful voice over person. I'm an awful, I don't want to hear your voice when Mayfair closed down.
This guy, it was, at least I don't have to listen to that guy on video again. And so here we are. I saw, but, you know, it's, there's, there's, there's, there's a level of kind of maintaining, hey, this is, this is our goal. And if we express it smartly, if we work with people that are going to be able to produce quality content, um, and we understand that we're doing this as, you know, in a broad way so that people have a chance to have fun with our stuff.
We have a, a chance to talk about our stuff and, and be enthusiastic about it to really enjoy what we're doing, not producing things out of just obligation, but finding something, you know, finding something in this process that makes you happy that communicates the, the excitement of, of a new game and, and a new way of, you know, a new mechanism that you maybe haven't seen before or haven't seen in that way. You know, excitement is, is so much of what makes that fun.
And yes, content creators bring that excitement, a manufacturer otherwise, and you kind of can tell the ones that, you know, who are legitimately doing this because they love it. And it just happens to make some money as well. And those people that maybe you're a little more, a little more pedestrian about it.
But ultimately at the end of the day, um, as a company, it's got to be kind of that broad mix, but it's got to be the broad mix of stuff that you are, are willing to sustain online over time. And as we ramp some of our efforts up behind all that is okay. I'm ready to start doing it. Ready to start interacting with folks on YouTube again. Ah. Here we go. Yeah. Yeah. Well, so yeah, my take away is from that right one, you know, enthusiasm, genuine enthusiasm is a superpower.
Um, and that's something I've realized throughout my life. And, you know, frankly, I don't think any of us would be doing what we do in this space. We weren't genuinely enthusiastic and passionate about it. There's plenty of other ways to make, make, make a living. Uh, if you're going to be in tabletop games in particular, really got to have a passion for it and, uh, make sure to be honest and let that show.
And then when it comes to content creation, I mean, like again, we've been doing this podcast now for, uh, when we started in like 2018, 2017, so six, six, seven years now. And I, you know, we do it every month now more to twice a month and it's, I would never, ever have continued to do this work and continue it if I didn't love these kinds of conversations. Like I just genuinely, you know, love talking to people like you.
I love chatting about the industry and like thinking about design and the business of design. So, you know, if it wasn't for me doing this for me, I wouldn't be here. I mean, I want to serve the audience obviously, but I would eventually burn out if it was just like a slog every time. So, uh, very important, uh, there. And then, uh, and then I think the other thing I heard you say, uh, is that, uh, you know, you got to be prepared.
If you're going to put yourself out there, uh, for the haters and for all the things that come with that because I don't know if gaming is particularly bad about this. It feels like it is. There's some people just really like they're just there to, they, they get a joy out of hating on you. Uh, if you're going to put yourself out there and do anything of substance, uh, you just need to be okay. That's just going to come your way sometimes. It's going to happen.
I, I, I, I, I, someday I will, I'm going to make a mini documentary about the guy that, that rates one on everything on BGG. There's got to be a story there and it's got to be worth 20 minutes at some point in film. It's just, you know, what, what, what drives a person to literally rate thousands of games a year or one before they're released just because they can. There's, there's got to be something there that, you know, that triggers that.
But I think, I think, you know, one of the things that I, it's one of my favorite stories to tell. Um, and I think it addresses, you know, when you talk about your core principles, you know, when you talk about the curiosity element of things. Um, and, and I, and I professed the story by saying, I've made this up. It's going to sound really real.
But apparently I was so desperate to have this point made that I was willing to create out of whole cloth, this, this, I've never been able to track down why I know this. But here we are.
So a number of years ago, the band Ransid was working with Joe Strummer, the clash and Joe was doing some production work for them for some of their music and somebody asked Joe Strummer, hey, you know, Ransid is doing the same kind of music that the clash was, you know, in the 70s, you know, it's this ring, you know, it's punk with a little reggae and go on. Are you frustrated? Are you upset that they're having success right now and, and you're not?
And you know, he kind of, you know, he kind of laughs and he says, look, 20 year olds do not want to watch 50 year olds on stage playing 30 year old songs. Every generation has to have its own clash. Um, and, and, and for me in gaming, you know, it's like, I consider and say, El Grande is the best area control game that's ever been made and everybody, you know, fine. That's, that's cool. No one's, you know, El Grande is still there.
You can, you know, research it, but in the same way, like, like Kevin Smith would say, hey, I don't have to study those films in the 20s. I've got, I've got, you know, I've got Spielberg who's taken all that to still the down and, and I can learn from Spielberg, everything from that in a better format. You know, you've got to be able within, to have a career in this industry and game industry. You have got to be able to look at everything with fresh eyes and get excited about it.
And even if it is simply a repackaging or a tightening of something that has existed before, we can still celebrate that because people are still going to be discovering that thing. And they can go back and play those other games. They still exist. You can find them. Uh, but if, but as a, as a person who works in gaming as a career, you know, the people that I see get burned out of the people that can't capture that curiosity. They can't sustain that curiosity over time.
Can't, you know, look at something and say, yeah, it's like this, but there's, you know, what's the thing that's new and exciting and unique and different about that game that's going to make it relevant to people in 2024? And that's, you know, if you want a career in gaming at the end of the day, you know, if you're going to be doing this for 20 or 30 years, uh, you have got to be excited about what you're working with and the products that are out there in this industry.
In general, not just the stuff you work on and, and finding that passion and finding that, that stuff out there and being, you know, in love with it is, is, is what will sustain you through. Well, I cannot think of a better place to wrap up this podcast. Alex, that was great. Um, so for just to close out where people want to find more of your stuff or see the world projects you're working on or learn anything else is there somewhere to direct them to?
Um, I'm pretty much a Facebook creature of, creature of habits. So certainly, uh, my, my personal is pretty much open to most anybody that wants to take a look. Um, Amigo.games is our website for Amigo and that's, like I said, we'll have a renovation, we'll have a brand new version of that that I'm excited about.
They'll actually will start doing some blog posting on so you'll get to see a little bit of behind the scenes and, and some off the cuff stuff every week there, as that rolls out the next month or so. And beyond that, I met a lot of shows, uh, you know, if, if you're in essence, I'm there, I'm, like, I'm not sure if Paxton plugged. I'm there, uh, you know, shows are the, are the, are a way of energizing me. I like the travel.
I like the, the, you know, the being out there and, and, and being in person and talking to people. So, you know, I am, I'm not hard to find one way or another. Awesome. Well, I, uh, I'm not going to make it to Essence here, but I will definitely see you Paxton plugged and, uh, this was so much fun. Alex, thanks again. And, uh, yeah, I'll see you soon. Sounds good. Thanks so much. Thank you so much for listening. I hope you enjoyed today's podcast.
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I've taken the insights from these interviews along with my 20 years of experience in the game industry and compressed all into a book with the same title as this podcast, things 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 thinklickagamedesigner.com or ever time, but for sure.