Ep3: Lessons Learned Publishing Board Games with Fireside Games
Join Josh on The Business of Gaming podcast as he visits with Justin and Anne-Marie from Fireside Games, game designers and publishers in Austin, Texas. This episode discusses the process of deciding whether to self-publish or outsource game publishing, what publishers look for in games and how to pick partners for printing and consolidation for your gaming company.
Auto Generated Transcript:
Introduction
Hey y'all. Welcome to the business of gaming podcast. I'm Josh with Game Haven Guild, and today we are sitting down
with Justin and Amarie Dwit, the owners of Fireside Games in Austin, Texas. They have designed and published several
award-winning games in the last 16 years, including Castle Panic and Hot Shots, and have a new game coming out
called Please Don't Burn My Village. Can you guys take us to the beginning 16, 18, 20 years ago? Where did we start
saying, "Okay, I want to design board games." Well, it kind of started with me. Uh even when I was a kid, I would make
games. Uh I loved making games as a kid, making my friends play them. Uh this is way before video games. That's how old I
am. And then uh kind of fell out of that when I fell into uh video games, you
know, as people do. And then it was around, I'd say 2000ish when we played Katan. Settlers of Katan. A friend who
brought us over. We played a German version. And it kind of blew my mind. It's like, oh, this is what board games could be now. It was this whole new
world to get exposed to. Uh and it was the kind of thing where you'd go to the game store and you you'd already knew all the games that were there. you were
looking for the new ones. There weren't enough new ones in. So, started uh fiddling around with it again, evenings and weekends. Basically, I there were
games that I wanted to play that weren't out there yet. So, I started looking for those kind of games and making them. Uh
various amounts of success until we started working really on Castle Panic. And then that was the one where I had
made some games where people weren't cooperating. I saw an opportunity to make a game where everybody worked together against the game. And that was
super new at the time. And we had this thing where once it started working, which wasn't at first, it was terrible.
Once we got it working, it uh became the kind of thing our friends were asking us to bring it over and they were like, "Okay, uh yeah, I'll bring that Castle
game. Sure, we'll try it again." And then people would like it and have fun and tell their friends to come over and play. And we knew we had some. So that
was what really got me into designing games, refining them. And Castle Panic was our first one. Pushed all the way with that. And we'd always wanted to
start a business some way or another. During this time, I'd worked for Steve Jackson Games and learned a lot about the industry and then decided like,
okay, let's launch our own company. Let's just do it. This is way before Kickstarter and all that. We just literally saved up a bunch of money,
wrote a big scary check, and off to the races. Our game turned out to be a hit, and there you go. We've been busy ever
since. So, from the beginning, you were thinking about publishing your own games. Did you ever consider having someone else publish them?
Self Publishing vs Outsourcing Publishing Board Games
Yeah, I mean, that was actually originally the first thought. Um, having worked for CJ Jackson Games and just been around games, I'd seen how that had
sort of worked and originally that was my plan, but the biggest problem we had was we couldn't find anybody we felt was
a good fit for Kessle Panic at the time. Um, and also I had about seven or eight
other games that I wanted to make. And when we took a step back, we're like, well, it's not that I have a game or two, we have like a brand. They were all
similar. They were all very, what we like to call gateway games. Was like getting people into the hobby, which back in 2009 was still pretty hard to
do. People were scared of board games back then. So, we had this great idea of like we build this whole brand around this idea that maybe we should do our
own thing. Um, I had looked into doing some freelance work, but like I said, the biggest problem really was we didn't have a good home for the games I was
working on. we were really kind of doing something unique for in terms of the type of gameplay, the the depth and strategy of what we're looking for.
Wasn't one of those big crunchy games and these weren't light party games either. It was kind of an in between. So, that's where we decided, let's do
it. Now, it kind of makes sense for us to do this not out of the blue because my background was graphic design, illustration, and I've been working in
the board game industry and her background was writing, editing, uh she had a lot of business savvy. She was the
vice president of a company for a while. So, we have a bit of a ven diagram of skills that made sense for us to start a company. We weren't just running around
the woods going let's make a company. So that first year Castle Panic is ready to go. What were the first steps in
How to Start a Game Publishing Company
actually creating a publishing company? Well, I mean really first from the business side it was incorporating and
getting our uh books set up and you know making sure that the business end was taken care of, setting up the website,
making sure that we were ready for people to come to us. And uh we actually kind of made some mistakes that we
didn't have to pay for uh fortunately. Um, and we we got the production run starting before we even had figured out
distribution. And so I I really like, oh, we really lucked out. But, you know,
while it was being manufactured, we um we actually because of Justin's work with Steve Jackson Games, we knew some
folks that worked at Publisher Services Incorporated in out of uh Georgia. And
um so we pitched Castle Panic to them and um they
felt like Castle Panic would be a great addition to their line and so they signed us as a publisher. So there's to
this day our consolidator. So they handle a lot of our all of our sales worldwide. Could you explain what a consolidator is
for us? Yeah. Yeah. So a consolidator they basically like take our inventory and
it's on consignment. Um, so we don't have to pay for the warehousing. They're
holding it for us so that when they make sales into domestic hobby, international
hobby, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Books a Million, Target, Walmart, uh, they
haven't been in Walmart yet. Um, but, um, yeah, goals. That's right. Hashtag goals. um they're they're the ones that
are the face to the sales teams for those retailers and they're the face to
the distributors and the hobby side so that they're the ones selling our product and that allows us to focus on
game design and development and the rest of it. Now, that doesn't relieve us of a lot of marketing and sales on our end
and so much over the years has kind of transitioned to a lot of direct sales with retailers and so we've had to kind
of open that up also. But um but a consolidator does a lot of the
nitty-gritty lifting. You mentioned building out a website earlier and when this came out in 2009,
was the consolidator fulfilling your online sales? They don't fulfill our online even still. Um uh we handle all our own
online sales. Um, now I say that I I can fill out a
spreadsheet and submit it to them and they will fulfill it out of the warehouse, but it's not a direct line
from our Shopify store to their uh warehouse. We don't have that integrated
where they're still working on that. That would be really nice, you know, to have that working. Um and uh we in in
fact we just signed this February with basically a um a European consolidator
out of the Netherlands that um we are going to be able to interface our website with um uh with their portal
their web portal so that when if you're from a European country or you know from the UK you can go in and purchase the
game and instead of go purchasing through our shop. It basically links to their shop and then they can do all the
fulfillment directly from their warehouse. Then the shipping is reasonable. I mean, we've had, you know,
we have our UK VAT and our German VAT numbers and so we can technically sell, but the shipping cost is that like and
you know, we'll get customer complaints about the shipping. I'm like, I know, you know, but we're about to Yeah, we're
about to have that solved, so that'll feel good. So, let's take it back to 2009. Castle Panic comes out and it does pretty well
right out of the gate. Oh yeah. Yeah. It it blew all our expectations. Yeah. We thought we had probably two years
worth of inventory and um it sold out in 10 weeks. So it kind of caught us, you know, back
on our heels and so it took three months before we had the next print run in. And so we it came out
in September and we had sold out, you know, 10 weeks. So we kind of even missed the Christmas, you know, month,
uh December. Um, and then I don't think we had replenishment until like March,
March or April. And then that sold out in like three months. And so for the first couple years, we were trying to
just catch ourselves. A lot of my day-to-day was just Emory was working your full-time job at the
time. And it so it was all me and my job was mostly keep the gears rolling and keep getting the next print run ready and trying to estimate how many should
we print this year or how this this print run and how many can we afford to print. That was the other thing was growing the business, dumping all the
money back in to make another print run and grow it. That was huge. Meanwhile, trying to work on other games. The last question on origins. How did
How to Pick a Printer for a Board Game
you actually pick who to print with? Both for the first one as well as did you change as you went along?
I reached out to a lot of people in industry. I like to say I asked a lot of really smart people, a lot of really dumb questions on how to get started
with a business back then and they were all very kind. And part of what I learned was I got a couple of contacts for different printers and then did some
Google searching back then and ended up um reaching out to a handful of printers and seeing where they worked. Um tried a
few domestics and realized we weren't going to be able to make that work. So I started talking with Chinese printers and uh I ended up finding a company that
um I could talk to their people in I think it was Chicago and they would handle uh the printing in uh overseas in
China so I didn't have to be working directly with ch with the Chinese manufacturer which is super great. Um, and uh, also they were willing to run
the low numbers we need because back then most game printers couldn't do anything less than 5,000 units minimum.
A lot of them weren't even that low. Some were 7,500. And uh, we knew we weren't going to be our very first print
room was 3,500 and I had to kind of beg them to do that. Then the next one I came back was like, okay, more. So, but
um, yeah, I ended up essentially finding somebody that would work with us on print run. I got a good vibe working
with them. the communication was really good because that was one of the things back then I don't think a lot of the Chinese companies were used to working
with as many as many should say uh uh different uh American publishers. So the
communication was rough. The times were weird. You be getting emails at 2 in the morning and stuff. So having somebody domestic I could work with was a saving
grace. Um and we were with them for like our first I think eight printings or something like that. Something like that. I forget the exact number but at some
point I started getting a little more educated and being a little more flexible and I found other competitive bids. we started outsourcing or or
putting out bids for other games and we found people that were either more competitive or had slightly better quality or etc. There's always reasons
but since then we've worked with probably half a dozen printers or so I'd say um yeah we we uh we work with a much
different people. Some of them are a bit more specialized in certain ways. Some of them are the communication's better. Some we've just worked with so long we
have such good relationships with now. But yeah, originally it was a bit of a kind of see who you like the best and
roll the dice and pick one. If you were starting out from scratch today though and you had to pick one, what are the
key things you would look for andor questions you would ask to help weed out the options? Well, the biggest thing now I would say
is um the field is much more level than it was even 5 years ago in terms of quality. Most people are putting out
excellent games. It doesn't matter who they are unless there's someone you've never heard of. Um what I would do right now is kind of what I do is I when I'm
reaching out to a new printer especially, I look at their history. Who have they worked with? What games are they printing right now? What games aren't they printing that they were in
the past? and I have enough contacts in the industry I can reach out and go hey you're not with them anymore can you tell me why or boy you've been with them
forever how's that everybody in this industry is super fun we're all happy to talk about that kind of stuff there's also that's not really trade secret that
they'll anyone will take your money and make a game that's one of the biggest things right now would be um quality of what they're doing uh overall feedback
like that and then it kind of comes down to pricing and how quick they are with both feedback and turnaround because
some people will promise you one thing and then deliver something else and you won't know that unless you can talk to someone else but also Those people tend
to get burned very quick. If they're those people who promises they can do the game, this and they add on a bunch of costs. No one works with them. So the
big names you've heard of or may or may not have heard of of printers, they're all pretty common. A lot of us work with the same five or six people kind of
thing. Um some companies a little bit known for different levels of quality. Uh like for example, Panda does really
nice games and Panda's really good if you're a new designer and you're just getting started. They are really good
about kind of holding your hand, walking you through the process, showing you alternatives to different materials, processes, and really helping you make
the best game you can, but you're going to pay for that. Um, I haven't worked with Panda because I've got enough experience now. I kind of know what I'm
doing. They've been great to work with in terms of our communication with them, but we've never been able to pull the trigger just for price. They've just
always been a lot more expensive. Um, other printers, you know, sometimes they're a good deal, sometimes they're a
little underpriced. Uh, we've we've canceled jobs with printers because they've been weird. So, um, yeah, early
on I think it comes down to the biggest key things. Are they going to do the quality you want? Are their prices good? And what's it like to work with them?
How do you what's the vibe? How do you like their communication style? How easy are they to work with? How fast are they to respond and stuff? So, so very much a
package like that. Same question about the consolidators. What would be the questions you would ask today? I would have more questions
for the publisher, you know, and like what's the it depends on kind of what's
the nature of their business and what are they hoping that the consolidator can do for them. You know, if they're already doing a lot of direct sales and
they want to keep doing direct sales, you know, consolidator may or may not be for them. online are going to get, you
know, the uh unless they're really trying to use a consolidator to expand into, you know, the distribution model
into um uh more sales with in the book space and the mass market space that,
you know, they would be great for that. Um uh so yeah, it all depends on kind of what you're coming to from and what
you're looking to get out of it. I mean, so maybe a consolidator is one of the first calls you should be making. I mean, I I it could be, you know, I mean,
I'm glad we got on with our consolidator early on because it saved us a lot of um
uh detail work, you know, and because we don't have like I I think of our
consolidator like the biggest benefit to me is cost containment because when you're working out of a warehouse on
your own and you're having in your sales flagged for a month, not only are you
hit with decreased revenues, you're hit with increased costs on the space that you're taking up in the warehouse. Um,
so when you're working with a consolidator, if I have slow sales one month, I'm not doubly hit with um also
warehousing costs. Now, obviously, they're taking out their percentage, you know, with those sales that makes up for
that. But it enables me to um uh make better judgments about what my costs are
going to be and make, you know, better judgments around revenues. it it helps
smooth things out, you know, um and not having to have, you know, all the extra
energy making those phone calls myself and having to make those sales and and it's I mean board gaming industry as as
large as it's gotten is still based on relationships, you know, so you also get to leverage the relationships that the
consolidator has with all the different um venues that they're selling into.
So Castle Panic's a hit. There are three things in your history that I want to ask you about after that. Not
necessarily in chronological order. Uh but the first is why was the second edition printed? What led up to that
decision? Yeah, that was a tricky one. We went round with that for a while. Um we did 20 something printings of Castle
Panic before we pulled the second edition trigger, but we had been itching for it for a while. Uh there were a
couple of reasons. Um we wanted to update the art for one thing. We felt like it was starting to look like an an aged game because it was 10 years old,
but by the time we really got seriously started on the second edition. Um, there were things we wanted to fix. There were a couple of minor edits to the game.
Gameplaywise, it was remarkably solid. Second edition is almost exactly the same game. We cleaned up a couple of FAQ
issues, but primarily it's an art refresh. Uh, also some graphic design. We did some stuff to work better with colorlind and things like that. So, it's
a more modern game and I think just overall, you know, art improvement. But the it's kind of a weird story because
part of that was when we wanted to do for the 10th anniversary, we'd been asked almost since the game came out to do a a giant deluxe version with
miniatures. Everybody always wanted a minis version of Castle Panic. Well, we decided we'd do that as a deluxe one and that was going to be our first
Kickstarter. We'd never done one before and we knew this was going to be a ridiculously expensive, complicated project. So, we did it. Um, long story
short, we made the giant super deluxe collection. And as part of that, we went ahead and made second edition. It got
the art refresh. And out of that came second edition the retail version that we all buy in the stores today. Um so it
was kind of a a cost-saving way to make that happen but also it was about okay if we're going to do this big change and put this big line in the sand of before
and after that's where second edition belongs. Um really it was a it was a combination of things. It really was
though I would say it's been long enough and when we knew we were going to do the deluxe one it was like we don't want to keep this art. We know this needs to be
updated. It was a hard decision because the hobby retailers that we would talk to um most
of them said don't change the art. it looks great, you know, it's selling well, don't don't mess with it if it's
working, you know, and um and then you have to consider also all of the online
traction, all the SEO that's around that art and that look and the recognition
that we've gotten for that look and we're having to start all over with essentially, you know, you you want a
customer to see your gain seven times before they'll buy it. So um essentially
we're having to start over you know with our advertising and those touches you know because it's not recognizable to
the eye and um so that was a risk Amazon that was really tricky and risky how to
handle the it's you know considered now a variation and you know do we get a new skew how are we handling you know and we
had a lot of um SEO around our Amazon listing as well so you know I had to
think through like am I just trashing all of that data and all of you know all
the investment you know and then in hindsight was it positive positive yeah positive the other um and
the on the other side was Target was refusing to pick it up because they didn't like the cover you know and so
like okay and we had tried a a modified kind of keeping the art but changing just the cover you know and still didn't
get in so you know that was one of the motivators And uh we got in some test
stores with Target and we went for a year and then um Target has decided not to carry it forward, you know. So um but
I'm still happy that we made the change. It looks so much better. And we do have
people occasionally say, "I prefer the old art." Really wonderful. I love that. Yeah, I know. Right. Well, and it
allowed us to get more um representation and as well, you know, so it's nice to
have, you know, like I used to have uh mothers and daughters come up and ask me
why there weren't any women in Castle Panic and I'm, you know, that was really, you know, I had no answer
because I knew I knew better. But I also knew like in that first edition like
Justin drew that in like a month, you know, whisp. Yeah. So we weren't think you know it
was just you know we weren't thinking in terms of you know representation at that point. It was just like get the game
done you know it's it's time. So um but so second edition was the opportunity to kind of write
those wrongs and you know um have people see themselves more in the game. So Exactly. Yeah.
So the second event I want to ask you about you started doing expansions and variations. How do you pick what's an
expansion versus a variation? Because now you've got a whole line of panic games. Yeah, I mean that was fairly organic at
first. Um the first expansion we came out with was the Wizards Tower. And that has a weird story because a good 15 20%
of that I would say was actually in some of the original Castle Planet concepts. But when we were playing this, you got to remember this back in 2009. We would
play this game with people who were new to gaming and we wanted it to be this gateway game. But we found even as simple as that game is by modern
standards, it was confusing people. They were getting frustrated. They didn't like the rules. It felt too fiddly to them. So we peeled out a few of the more
magical powerful elements to make the game a little bit more basic medieval fantasy generic kind of thing. And that
worked really well. So some of the things we peeled off like the idea of some of the spells, magical powers, there certain effects monsters had, we
took that and boiled it away. And meanwhile, I just kept coming up with more and more ideas. And as soon as Castle Panic came out, we had fans
bombarding us with ideas for what they wanted. And I made a bunch of notes. If you look in our rules, you'll see we credit people who gave us cool ideas for
monsters and effects and things. And so the first thing was pretty obvious. Bring the m bring the wizard in. Bring the magic in. Let it be more of the full
Lord of the Ringsy kind of experience with your wizard. And then after that, I had other ideas that started jelling
into like, okay, this is the uh expansion about um one giant eight-point monster and his army that comes out. And
then this is the one where you get to build stuff that I've been putting off for a few years. And so they all sort of coalesed into their own thing. Um, and
they've just kind of moved along the way in terms of what do we think is going to be most appealing right now that is going to add a change to the game that
it doesn't currently have. And that's why the last one, Crowns and Quest, brought some of the biggest changes um, in that it brings like playable
characters to the game and it puts this quest engine in where you now have to fight monsters and go on these quests. So, you got this whole system like that.
The variations were more kind of business opportunities, I would say, really. Right. Yeah. Well, and the first one we started
with was Dead Panic, and that actually came from fan suggestions, but that's true. They so many asked for a zombie
version. We're like, "Okay, let's make a zombie version." But Justin is very
steadfast about making sure that the variations give a new experience and it's not just a paint job.
Yes. And so it took a while to think through like, okay, if this is a zombie version
of this panic system, what does that look like? How does it feel? you know, and that's when he came up with the idea
of having a cabin in the middle and you're trying to escape. So instead of trying to defend it, you can and it and
it's really fun to watch people who have played Castle Panic play dead panic and
really at there's a certain point in the game, you have to let the walls crumble
and you have to just get the radio, call that van and get out, you know, and just let the cabin go. And it's really fun
when people realize like oh I don't have to defend the central structure like the cabin the cabin can go you know and um
and and so you know so that is you know its own unique experience you brought in
ranged weapons with that and um then I think the next one was munchkin pan I
think so. Yeah. Yeah. So, and I actually did the design on that where I saw. So, at first it was
like how like Munchkin is really this backstabby, you know, game and then Castle Pang is this nice friendly
cooperative game and Justin was like what what is the like how do you how do
you fit those together, you know? And I immediately saw that they're both about card combos. And so that's that's where
you can blend them is, you know, giving making sure that the the um card combos
kind of help bring in the nature of both of them and that way they'll that's where they kind of meld. But then
bringing in the and it has it has the basic panic system so I didn't have to worry about that being represented. But
now, um, you just you want to have the most kills. So, you don't have to, if you're
in the lead, you might want to help the monsters take down the castle so that the game ends, you can help end the game
and you're in the lead with your body count. And um, that I think that brought a lot of fun, you know, into that, you
know, backstabby element. So, it felt very munchkinny, but still had the panic system. Yeah. Work our whole way to be munch.
Yeah. Yeah. And I think Star Trek was after that. So, let's talk about Star Trek because it is Star Trek. How is it working with
How Different is it Working with an IP like Star Trek?
a huge IP like that? The Star Trek one came about a little bit differently in that that is a game that was actually manufactured by USA.
They're now called the OP. So, they were the ones who had the license and they reached out to us saying they had worked with Steve Jackson Games as well. So,
they were like, "Hey, we've worked with them. We'd like to work with you. We have an idea that we might or well really they were like, "We want to work with the Castle Panic system. What can
we do?" We we brainstormed some ideas, talked to them, told them we were open. And then they came back and said, "Hey, we've got this license. can we make this
work? And it turned out to be Star Trek, which I'm a huge Star Trek fan. That was an easy one. Um, so they ended up basically um handling the the the
license. I like to describe it as an Oreo. They were the cream filling. Uh Paramount was on one or Columbia, I
can't remember who had Star Trek at that time, but Star Trek was on one side, we were on the other. Um, but it turned out it was kind of amazing. Um, first off,
the op did an amazing job handling it. We had great feedback, great return, and Colombia was super in on things. They
were all over what they wanted, what they didn't want. They were very clear with their feedback. Uh they were very
open to ideas, too. They they actually were open to a few things I pushed back on as a Star Trek nerd going, "Well,
that's not actually canon, so let's change that." "Oh, that's a great catch. Thanks." So, there were things like that. Um I think uh there were a couple
of minor issues we had that were some licensing things with rights for I think it was some of the actors. We couldn't
use certain people in certain poses or I don't remember. There was some weird thing like that. Well, it had to be it
had to be a still photography from the um series,
right? Had to be the original. It had to be still photography. So, it couldn't couldn't be any, you know, new art or
anything like that. It couldn't be the movies either. That was the other thing. It had to be from the which was fine. No, the whole point was it was part of the 50th anniversary
of the original series. I could have sworn we had some weird legal thing where there was like one picture we couldn't use, so we got another picture.
Like that was the extent of the horribleness. No, they were great to work with. I'm I'm sure there were conversations USPly had that maybe
weren't quite as fun, but we sure got the good part. Yeah. I mean, the OP made it really easy for us.
That was that was I I loved it because when it was all said and done, um they
said that um I believe it was Colombia at the time said that
Justin's version, his implementation of Star Trek was the most faithful implementation of the IP that they had
seen. So, I was really proud of Justin for that. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, that's quite the accomplishment.
Yeah. Right. When the Star Trek people say you did good. So, both of you have designed several games at this point. When did you start
looking at taking games from other designers to publish? The first one we took in was actually from our customer service who was
working for us. She uh she designed here Kittykitty. And uh so it's a game where
you're trying to lure cats onto your property. And um and Justin actually gave some really good feedback and she
did iterations and you know you worked on it with a lot of the design too. You kind of did more of the dev work. Yeah, I did dev work kind of you help
with design that initial design and then I helped with dev work at the end and so that was our first one and you know it
was it was really neat to have it kind of homegrown like that. We have dipped in and out of having outside submissions
with you know greater and lesser like success.
Justin's designs have always sold the best for us. So the more we can get his designs designs on the market the
better. And we usually pull try to pull in the outside designs to help fill the gaps while he's designing. I mean, last
year I probably looked at 500 game designs and we signed one.
So there it's, you know, it's a very competitive market. So you have to be
super picky. It's please don't burn my village was the one, you know, that we picked up. And um
uh it's it's very hard to make sure that there every game out there needs to have a reason that it's on the market. And
when you have 5,000 new games coming out a year, what's its reason? You know, how
is it how is an improvement? How is it an offering to the market? How is this something that the customer needs now?
So, it's uh it's really hard to, you know, just find that off the shelf. Well, why don't you tell us about Please
Detail on Please Don't Burn My Village
Don't Burn My Village. It's coming out now. What made it that one of the 500?
We were at a kind of an industry event and there was a designer there that it
actually was a tulip game. It was based on the tulip market system and Justin
played it and immediately loved it. And I would say I'm I'm a little easier touch on like, oh, I see something in a
game that, you know, I like and Justin's usually the one that's like, no. And uh he played it and immediately
loved it. I'm like, if we both immediately love this game, you know, from the start, I'm like, we've got to sign this game. And um but there's
already like a couple of tulip games. Um lot of flower, lot of flower games out there. And you
know, just from a marketing perspective, it's like how is how does that game
entice someone to pick it up off the shelf, you know? And I'm like, I'm not sure Tulips do it, you know, like how is
that engaging? And so we actually had um
we brainstormed a lot on that and in fact we started art that on a completely different theme. Um
um yeah too. That's right. Yeah. Um and then you know we were like I just is the
pitch isn't quite working on this. It's not like it doesn't feel like the mechanics are really lining up with that theme well enough. And so we just
brainstormed some more. And then Justin said, you know, what about a dragon? You know, and then that kind of led us to
like, what are you doing with the dragon? Okay, the situation is try to bribe the dragon. Why are you bribing this dragon? You know, don't burn my
village. You know, we're like, well, let's call it that. Please don't burn my village. What if we just called it please don't burn my village? And then we were like, if you're going
to have a dragon, we might as well set it in the world of Castle Panic and help build that brand. have some standalone
games because we have the expansions, we have the variations. Now he's experiences. We already have the dragon,
but then we gave, you know, the dragon like a little attitude, you know. So it's so it's the dragon from the wizards
tower, but you know, the dragon in the wizard's tower has a more serious countenance and this one has a little
more playful, mischievous uh look on his face. So he's much more interested in money.
Yes. Exactly. As opposed to just destroying your pets. Yeah. Yeah. So we wanted to bring some humor into it and you know so a reason
to pick it up off the shelf you know so we felt like a dragon that you know is
giving you that look and you know you've got this compelling please don't burn my
village what's that about like that's something that you want to find more out about you know as opposed to tulips of
Amsterdam you know like that's cool but do I care yeah and that's part of it I mean that level of
marketing even at that level of just like what are we calling it and How does it work? That's huge because we've seen
games not sell because of title, art on the cover, box trim size, just a million
reasons a game can fail. So, you got to look at all those and start checking those boxes early to get past that. So,
on the other side, we've also seen like boxes that don't tell you anything about the game, titles that aren't compelling,
and they're like bestsellers. I'm like, how is that working? But it does. It is not an absolute guarantee. Nobody
knows. That's the big thing whenever you launch a game is you never know. Yeah. The other one you have announced is Ham Hellsync coming out soon. Can you
Detail on Ham Helsing
tell us a little bit about that? Yeah, so that one is actually one that we were approached by the author and illustrator Rich Moyer. He's the guy who
came up with Ham Hellink. It's a series of books he's done. Uh they're illustrated graphic novel books and uh he reached out and first I had to make
sure he was real because it seemed too good of an offer. I'm like, "Wait, you just want me to make a game out of your book?" And then I went and looked. I was like, "Oh, your book's adorable. Yes,
let's do this right now." So, um, unfortunately he reached out while we were still finishing up, uh, Castlevanic
Deluxe, which took a lot of work and many years to get the whole thing done. So, we had to kind of put it on hold until we could get it finished, which
now it's here. But, uh, we wanted to mimic sort of the, uh, adventure style of the book. The book is about a series
of well, Ham goes and he meets some friends and they have this big adventure and it turns out who you thought was the bad guy isn't, but there is a bad guy
and you have to fight him. And I wanted to encapsulate that into sort of an adventure game. But also, as Emry said, every game needs a reason to exist. Now,
why is this one different? So, it's cooperative. It's an adventure board game. And what we did is we wanted to level you up without being kind of a
classic grindy dungeon crawl thing. So, what we have now is um part of the book has these spider minions that are
running around causing chaos. And you fight those as you move around the board while the boss slowly creeps turn by
turn closer to Mud Canyon. So, what you're doing is you're starting out fairly low-levelled with a deck of 10 cards um that are in plastic sleeves.
And uh as you fight these minions, you'll get skills that move up on a on a track on your player board eventually
towards getting you some free attacks. And you also get gold for them. And you spend this gold to buy clear cards out
of a market that's face up. And you sleeve those into your cards. And they line up and give you new powers. So you're growing your deck as you play.
You'll never get more than 10 cards, but your 10 cards get better and better as you play. You decide what you add to what card. It can really change up your
combos that when you play a card, you may get extra movement, extra attacks, you might heal, you might draw cards. I might draw a card that lets you draw a
card. Who knows? It's a lot of interactive cooperation like that. Meanwhile, you're moving around this board trying not to die while you
hopefully build up enough attack strength to go attack the boss. And there isn't enough time to just level up and not worry about it. You're going to
be having to make a hard decision of I can't stop the minions from destroying that location. It's time to fight the boss. We're just going to have to ride
that out. And of course, everything snowballs back. And in the end, you either have a glorious pulling uh
victory from the jaws of defeat or you go down in flight. Yeah, it's a uh one to four players. Uh
plays in about an hour, a little more if it's four players. And then uh super cooperative, super engaging, really cute
art cuz uh Rich did all the art for it, the same illustrator who did the the books. So, it totally fits his world and
all that. It was really fun to work with him on that. I'm really excited to get this one out there. I don't think anybody's done anything quite like that.
This checks boxes I haven't seen before and and plays very different than even the closest uh what uh uh card building
games like that. So, yeah, that's that's later this year. We're still we're still crossing our eyes and tees on that and
dealing with some international issues, but uh it's coming. Yeah, there are a couple of card
crafting games that are coming out um Mystic Veil style, but I don't see any that are adventure
games like this. So, it's still, you know, even though we we have this habit of like hap happening upon a trend, you
know, I don't know if like two other games make it a trend, but um I still feel like this has its own place because
it's doing something different with that card crafting. Well, having done this now for 16 plus years, what is the one piece of advice
Experts Advice on Publishing a Board Game
you would go back in time and give yourself before you were just starting out?
Don't do it. Don't do it. Yeah. Right. Be very, very careful. Honestly, I would go back and talk to myself about the freelance
versus you running your own business thing because part of the problem was
it's you don't know until you know something. But the amount of extra work it takes to run a game company that has
nothing to do with making games is a bit overwhelming sometimes, especially when you get to where we are where we're big
enough that we need to like go to conventions, we have to make appearances in places, we have to deal with international shipping and safety testing and all that stuff. That's what
most of my days are. the design that I love that I wanted to do the day we wrote the check to start the company. That's so hard now. We have to really
lock out time for that. And be careful of how you spend your money and how you grow and all the risks that are out there. It's one of those things where
like I tell people, do you remember when that a couple years ago that ship got stuck in the Panama Canal? I'm sure you didn't care. I had a heart attack
because I knew what that meant for global shipping and what that was going to do to everything. And when you hear about, oh, there's a backup at a port or
there's a strike at a port. I can't sleep that night because that affects my day-to-day job. So that level of like,
oh wow, you pay attention to a lot of things. That's not the most fun. I The tricky part is I don't know what our
lives would have been like if we'd gone freelance. I think I mean I'm glad we did. I'm glad I didn't. No. Yeah, that's a good way.
I'm glad we did it. Um I love package design. I love product design. And I
love thinking through like the best um uh positioning for a game and how to,
you know, how to uh have um an offering from a mechanical standpoint as well as
a um a product standpoint and those being two very different things and how
to best kind of serve that to customers. It's a fun It's a fun game to play in and of itself, you know, but when your
livelihood depends on you getting it right, like that's very stress inducing. So, yeah. Um, and it's gotten harder.
Like, it used to be before 2016, we could just hit reprint on everything. Like, I didn't worry about backlist and
like every reprint run sold through like, you know, I didn't have to worry like what do you mean product life
cycle? Like, no such thing. They all just sell all the time. And then about 2016 the glut started catching up with
all of us you know and I mean when we started there were about a thousand new SKs a year and we had people advising us
like you know don't you know it's it's already crowded a thousand a g you know a year don't do it you know and now
there are 5,000 no since 2016 there have been about 5,000 new skus a year and so
you know and not in it feels like every game um kind of on average or the
median, you know, across gaming, you start seeing lower sales per game
because you're not only competing with the new games that came out this year, but the games that came out the year before and the year before that. And um
and that's honestly that's why um we didn't reprint Hot Shots um back in 2017
because we were told it's a oneanddone environment. retailers were telling us like when you sell through that first
print run, don't don't get a second one going because move on to the next thing. Yeah. Just move on, you know, and it's a
one and done. And we actually had a hit on our hands. Didn't realize it. So,
yeah, we're bringing that one back. Um but um but they're right, you know, for the most part, like it's it's very
dicey, you know, and so that creates problems around, you know, how much am I spending on marketing? And we, you know,
we used to like be able to just kind of blow it out. at that first print run and you're not worried about making any
money on that first print run. You make your money on your second and your third. But what you can't depend on, you know, having more than one print run,
then you have to start looking at marketing differently and but if you don't do enough, then you haven't, you
know, done enough for it and so you might not even sell through that first print run. So, uh, it's gotten trickier
and trickier. You regret. Yeah. Well, if someone wants to find one of your games, where's the best place to find them? Oh, definitely our website
firesgames.com. Perfect. Well, thank you both for joining us today and telling your story. Thank you. Pleasure to be here.