I'm a dad who quit his job 3 years ago to make board games. My wife and I have now made over $1 million in revenue. AMA!

Are you now or will you in the near future bring us a balanced version of the Cones of Dunnshire?

If I had a dollar for every time people asked me something about Cones of Dunnshire :) I am totally Ben Wyatt in so many ways. Haha, we even made our last Kickstarter video using stop motion I just realized.

I'll see what I can do!

That's it!? I thought it'd be longer!

No, you don't understand! I was proud of that!

I compared it to the next Avatar!!

Haha so classic. I'm going to watch that episode today.

Edit: Also, I just realized I'm married to a girl from Indiana...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OepXFbP5Zr8

I love the game box aesthetic. I hope we can have a whole shelf for you on the Kallax at some point :)

Salem to Tortuga to Deadwood. Where are you headed next?

We're not revealing Volume 4 just yet, but we're hard at work on it. But whereas the first 3 are all in the Americas, the next one will not! So many possibilities though for the series. Pick a city and a year and build a game around it.

Was the stop motion scene comparable to Avatar?

Seriously though. If you were to make The Cones of Dunnshire I would find it very, very difficult to not throw money at you and your family : D

Haha, noted :)

how do you feel about calzones?

Great until they betray you.

Yes.

How did you investigate producing the game when you first decided to dive in?

I went to a local game convention and talked to a lot of game makers who were a few years ahead of me. The community is super helpful in pointing new creators in the right directions in terms of manufacturing, logistics, etc.

I always tell people that the game community is so helpful because if someone buys my "competitors" game, they are actually then more likely to buy my game. Games turn people into "gamers" and then they buy more and more games :)

Compared to something like a toothbrush. If I buy a toothbrush I don't need another one. If I buy a game, then I'll probably buy another one as I hold more game nights at my house, etc. It's a really cool industry.

How did you navigate the legal aspects, like intellectual property right to your game, copyright, etc. Were legal fees built into your original business plan?

$1 million in revenue, but how much in profit if you don't mind me asking. Obviously feel free not to answer that if you don't want to.

There's actually not too much to do since natural copyrights are built in. You can't patent game mechanics, so there's that.

So much of the value of games is actually executing them right. Making it all come together. So someone who "stole" the idea of the game would still be years behind. Also the game community is very protective- if they see a copy of another game, then they will point out the faker and won't buy the new one.

Profit is about 50% after all the manufacturing, shipping, advertising, illustration costs.

-What finally made you quit your job? -How far were you into the board game business journey when you quit your job?

We were lucky that our first game did really well right out of the bat. It had made $100,000 on Kickstarter, so some of the risk of leaving was mitigated. At that point I ran another side gig of digital marketing for small companies. When we launched our 2nd game and it also did well then I started doing only games full time.

That’s amazing good to see people taking risks to pursue a passion. I see the third game in the Kickstarter link. What are the first 2?

The first two are referenced in the 3rd campaign. You can also see them on our website, facadegames.com

Our games are:

Salem 1692 (originally called Salem)

Tortuga 1667

Deadwood 1876

Edit: Links added

I just visited your site, and in a shot of one of your games there's a character called Will Griggs. Surely he's named after international footballing legend Will Grigg?

Haha, he is not. He was a guy who actually lived in the town of Salem during all the witch trial madness.

I love your themes!

Thanks!

Do you physically make the cards and game pieces?

We do not. We work with factories in China to manufacture the games. There is a lot of sending designs and samples back and forth to get everything just right.

Is there a website or vetted resource to point people in the right direction, if they want to find a Chinese manufacturer of an idea or product that they have?

Boardgamegeek.com is the place to go! There are lots of forums there to ask all kinds of questions. This guy also always has lots of really helpful tips on the logistics: https://stonemaiergames.com/about/jamey-stegmaier/

Edit: We've also just made this little guide for aspiring publishers: https://facadegames.com/how-to-publish-a-board-game/

Are they an ethical company?

As far as I know! We talk with dozens of factories for each game and look into their practices and what other games are using them for production.

Do you have a translator?

Nope - the factories in China (or at least the main liason) actually have good enough English to communicate.

Who would you contact to have some chinese factory make something?

An easy place to start is alibaba.com. You can request quotes on there for things and then several companies will start up dialogues with you about specifics.

Was just out of curiosity. The games look amazing by the way, very elegantly put together.

Thank you! Having cool components are super important to us. We try to avoid typical cardboard punchboards as much as possible :) So it's a lot of communicating with the factory about what is possible. I've found that manufacturers can make almost anything that you can envision.

How many times have you playtested each of the games you made?

Our current game is on Version 74 :) But each of those versions also has had about 3-4 tweaks along the way and 3-4 playtests. So literally hundreds. It's my favorite part of the process though!

Do you have a group of gamer friends who are willing to play test the games with you?

We do, yes. We've found that a lot of people love being on the innovative side of things and helping create the game. A lot of fulfillment in that.

As a follow-up, what’s the lowest-quality prototype you’ve thrown together? Quality in terms of components at least

Literally cutting up paper and writing what cards/boards do with pen. Prototypes don't need to be pretty to figure out if they work in terms of rules and game play. The design and illustration are the last thing that comes together once the game is already really fun.

How do you find playtesters?

There are often board game clubs at universities, or just local community groups. Also, friends of friends. Everyone has a friend who plays games, so it's just a matter of asking for introductions and getting new people over for game nights.

How does it feel to be Lily's dad from How I Met Your Mother?

Oh it feels good :)

I clicked on this AMA just to find this comment. Was not disappointed.

Yeah, saw this one coming from a mile away!

What are your margins?

Depends on the avenue. Generally about 50-60 percent goes towards profits for our living expenses, and to reinvestment into the company and other games. But yeah, the cuts that Amazon takes, that distributors take, that retailers take, that Kickstarter takes, all vary.

Thanks - congrats on your success!

I work with a guy that is very into the board game culture. He and his wife go to the conventions, play in clubs, spend hours testing them, etc. That community seems to be very passionate about it so prob great opportunity to find success making good games.

Yes, it's a super passionate community. Lots of great, helpful people!

So... What are your margins? Do you not know?

What is this shark tank?

It’s literally an AMA. 😀

True :)

Margins depend on the game, how many we manufactured with that edition, etc. But yeah, our profit is about 50-60% of MSRP.

Did you have kids at the time you quit? Serious props to you if you did, as that would make most people second guess themselves.

Your games look really fun

We did not at the time. Hard to say what I would have done if we did, because it is something to consider.

Do you think board games will still be popular a few decades from now?

I do. They are actually growing in popularity- I think because people are needing a retreat from technology because it is advancing so much. Something about sitting around a table with friends and touching physical pieces that really can't be beat.

Do you need someone to help you test out games? Lol. I love seeing more non-traditional board games (read as Hasbro repackaging a 50 year old game). What gets the idea for the game started, do you find the theme first then figure out gameplay mechanics or try to figure out what kind of interactions you want players to have with the game/others and go from there?

It really varies. Sometimes there's the idea of a mechanic that I build around (like in our 2nd game I built the game around the idea of a mutiny- working with a captain and then betraying him), and sometimes it's a historical setting (like in our current Deadwood game I learned about the town a lot before building the game around it). Really depends! Every game is a conglomoration of lots of inputs from life.

What are your top 3, not made by you, board games? Where do you draw your inspiration from? How do you see the board game genre developing in the coming years with the advancement of technology?

I am awful at picking favorite board games, because it always changes on my mood. But my most recent favorites are Code Names, Pandemic, Ticket to Ride, King of Tokyo, One Night Werewolf.

Inspiration comes from testing our games a TON, playing other games, learning about history (our games all have historical tie ins), and traveling! Traveling really jogs the brain for creativity.

Honestly I think the advances in technology make people want to go back to the basic cardboard and paper and tangible pieces in their hands. They need an escape from their phones and the mess of the internet. I think board games are getting more popular because of that.

I am super intrested in getting into this. I usually have a lot of ideas for the design and mechanics yet I really suck at creating artwork. Any Idea how to roll with this? Hire someone? Do you think a bigger budget is required before financing it on kickstarter?

Don't worry so much about the artwork at first. Make sure the game is super fun to play and is "flawless" in terms of mechanics.

For artwork, a good place to start is upwork.com. They have lower cost artists who do good work.

Here is some other advice about getting the project ready for Kickstarter that we wrote: https://facadegames.com/our-advice-to-kickstarter-creators/

Do you think you'll have "made it" enough to not use kickstarter someday? What do you see as the advantages to using kickstarter even after getting a couple of hits under your belt?

I think that's a possibility for sure. But I love Kickstarter for several reasons beyond just funding. It does a great job marketing the game since thousands of people see it and get excited about the idea of a campaign. It also lets us know how many games we can produce. If we made a game and then nobody bought it we would have a lot of lost money in sitting inventory. Kickstarter lets us know how many we can order, and bring down manufacturing costs accordingly (since ordering more brings the cost/unit down).

You can do your own marketing and preorders to achieve that, though, right? You mentioned you have to give kickstarter a cut of your revenue. If it's a convenience thing then maybe giving up that cut is worth it to you still.

Yes, but it would mean putting in a LOT in place on my website, marketing channels, etc. Kickstarter makes it super easy. Also, about 70% of our sales on Kickstarter come from internal Kickstarter traffic. They have that audience of people that we wouldn't be able to pull in otherwise.

How do you handle the artwork of the cards and boxes? Also is their any website coding knowledge internally or do you use a basic template? Do you have paid game testers or volunteers/ friends

My wife does the graphic design in Adobe Illustrator, and we hire an illsutrator to draw the pictures.

We have a weekly playtest group that comes to our house. We also have a network of a few other groups around the country that we send print and plays to test out.

How did you find/choose your illustrator? How much do you pay him/her? How did you decide on a salary for you and your wife versus reinvesting? Where do you plan to go from here? More board games? Thanks.

We found our artist on a university job board. For the first project we offered a percentage of whatever we made on Kickstarter, since we didn't have a lot to pay up front that first time. Since then we've tweaked it for each project.

You can also find artists for good prices on places like upwork.com and fiverr.com.

Deciding on salary is a lot to do with taxes. We pay ourselves more or less depending on how much we have made that year. On "up" years we'll increase our inventory and put more towards retirement.

And yes, more board games from here!

Any big plans now that you have a million in revenue? Other business interests or personal interests outside gaming you would go after? Just looking to live vicariously through you haha.

Good question! We want to keep making games! It's so much fun and it lets my wife and I work from home and not work crazy hours. So why mess up a good thing?

That being said, I'm interested in innovating in this world a bit. Creating cool interesting apps out of our games, inventing new genres of games, building on the worlds our current games are in, etc. There's so much room for creativity in the game world so it brings a lot of fulfillment.

Nice, yah does sound like the dream to me. Be able to put my energy towards my own pursuits. Best of luck with your future endeavors!

Thank you!

Where were you when you got the first idea of making a board game?

Alaska!

I was up there working for a summer and my friends and I designed a "Harry Potter Mafia" game that tweaked the traditional mafia/werewolves idea. That morphed into a game called "Cities" and then it became our first game "Salem." It was all just for fun of course, but then when it went big we found a way to keep making games.

How hard was it to come up with the concept/theme/idea? What do you do with concepts/themes/ideas that just don't work? Are you afraid of running out of game ideas?

The ideas for the games really just snowball from one little thing. We think of some core concept, or some city and year from history, and then build from there. We test a ton and keep improving as we go.

Not worried about running out of ideas :) There are infinite ways to play a game, and infinite themes to pull from.

What software do you use to design your games?

Our illustrator works in Adobe Photoshop, and my wife primarily works in Adobe Illustrator doing the graphic design

How do you start designing the game when you just have the idea and nothing else?

You just start! You get something printed out and test it. It's always awful the first 20 times, but you take little pieces of each version and keep making it better. But that's the key- test test test and don't be afraid of feedback and admitting the game sucks for a long time.

What kind of instruments, software, hardware, pencils etc, do you use to design the boardgames?

Lots of cardstock for printing off prototypes for games.

For software I just use Powerpoint for the non-designed prototypes for figuring out the game mechanics. Then when we design our illustrator uses Phototshop, and my wife (as the graphic designer) uses Adobe Illustrator.

What’s the process like starting a new game? Like what’s the process from ideation to shipping the games out. :)

Ah man, tough question :) Short version: come up with basic idea, test test test test test, get illustrations, get graphic design to put all designs together, proof rules, create kickstarter page, do Kickstarter campaign, manufacture game, freight game across ocean, ship out game. For longer version read more of this whole AMA.

What would recommend to someone for making a board game? Like what sort of skills and resources would help with making games?

Check out boardgamegeek.com and look around those forums.

Don't be afraid of criticism! Print out a game and test it over and over again. Just jump into it and you'll pick up skills as you go.

How exactly are the 3 games different from eachother? All it says on the kickstarter is that each "have a dark, mysterious, or secretive element in its gameplay". I don't want to get into a Forbidden Island/Forbidden Desert situation where the games are almost identical

They all play very differently.

Salem: a group trying to find the witches. The witch team spreads during the game so it's a race against the clock. Lots of lying.

Tortuga: two hidden teams, so you have to figure out who your teammates are. Trying to get the most treasure for your team. Some lying, lots of strategy and using turns wisely.

Deadwood: work with a team to get the most gold, but at the end you have to kill your own teammates! Balance of teamwork, and self-preservation.

Hm, it sounds like your games involve a lot of lying and betrayal. Do you still trust your wife?

There have been many a game night where she doesn't speak to me for a good hour after we play :) We have lied to each other A LOT during our games.

A couple of friends and I are a little over a year into creating a board game, aiming to have a finished product to start looking to sell (on kickstarter or to an existing company) by the end of 2018. I think we're on version 5 or 6 of the rules at this point. Do you have any recommendations for who to work with once we get to the printing stage? What parts of the design process are pitfalls to watch out for, in your opinion? How did you balance players who want to do nothing but betray in an initially cooperative game vs players who don't ever want to backstab?

We used Panda Games for our first game. They are a little more costly, but make it easy for first time creators. pandagm.com.

One thing to watch out for in the design process is to not fall in love with your baby too much. Don't be afraid to hear points of criticism or recognize that your game might be clunky or flawed. Rip it apart to its core!

For your third question, just make sure incentives line up correctly. Reward them for staying just enough that they think about staying. But reward them for leaving if the opportunity comes up. Our new game Deadwood actually does this a lot.

Hey 'a dad'! I'm a huge fan of boards games and so I very much respect and envy you!

Where would one go to patent their own board game idea or to get the ball rolling?

Hey! Thanks!

We don't worry about patents, since it's really tricky to "patent" an idea of a game mechanic. So honestly don't worry too much about it. Just start making a game, testing it out, getting art slapped onto it, and then getting it out there!

But make sure you're making a game for the fun of it, not to make money. Most games don't make a lot of money. But if you passion shows through then people will see that and it may get big.

Since you were presumably not running a business before, what advice would you give to new business owners that could make life much easier now knowing the potential pitfalls?

Start using accounting software right off the bat to keep track of all income and expenses and taxes and such. Makes all the "boring" stuff easier in the long run so you can focus more time on the fun stuff of the business. Wave is a free software you can use. Quickbooks is what many people use.

the kickstarter page says 2-9 players but the FAQ says 4-9 players- which is it? i'm seriously considering getting the 3-pack!

edit: 3-pack secured!

Nice! Salem is 4-12 players, Tortuga is 2-9, Deadwood is 2-9. That's why we say each game in the series is "at least" 4-9.

How does the work life balance compare to your previous job? Do you work more hours now?

It's great! I work less now, and I get to be home all day with my wife and daughter, which is awesome.

Sure, it's harder to "clock out" since I never "clock in", so sometimes I have to force myself to not check emails over weekends. I also have to set hours for myself so that I will indeed "clock out" on some days. I really love what I do so I need to make myself stop.

But yeah, it's great being able to travel whenever we want and take days off whenever we want.

I've been thinking about a game that is mainly card based. Where do you get to get your cards produced?

We use makeplayingcards.com for prototype decks. Then when we actually manufacture we use factories in China.

With the past success of your games, why crowdfund through Kickstarter?

I love Kickstarter for several reasons beyond just funding. It does a great job marketing the game since thousands of people see it and get excited about the idea of a campaign. It also lets us know how many games we can produce. If we made a game and then nobody bought it we would have a lot of lost money in sitting inventory. Kickstarter lets us know how many we can order, and bring down manufacturing costs accordingly (since ordering more brings the cost/unit down).

If you desired, could you manage still working your previous job AND designing/producing/selling these games?

It would be very difficult at this point since we're running a full on business now with the games. It really wouldn't be fair or effective to work my old job as well. But I know that some people do it! Many game designers do it along with a typical 9-5 job.

What are some key elements of a successful board game?

Agreed with iRedditx0. Simple, yet intriguing rules. Also a great theme to tie in with the rules. And beautiful artwork that draws people in.

Your games look amazing! I love non-traditional board games and I've toyed with the idea of designing some myself.

What do you do for health insurance? I've thought about the idea of just doing creative stuff if there's a market for it, but having healthcare is my biggest concern.

Thank you so much!

For health care we just bought some on the open market. It's costly of course, but we just factor that in to our operating costs, just like any other company does when they pay benefits out to employees. My wife and I are basically just employees of our own company.

Search around, and even call up some health insurance agents. There are ways to do it on your own.