#821: My Two-Year Secret Project, COYOTE — The Strategies and Tactics for Building a Bestseller from Nothing with Elan Lee of Exploding Kittens

27:09Tim wants to treat his friends and his audience to something extraordinary. And we get approached all the time by people who want to make games. Big celebrities and singers and actors, all of them want to make a game. And whenever I ask them the question why, the answer is invariably because my agent told me to or because I think I can make money or really very superficial. Often they're not game players at all. They have no connection to the experience of game design. And when I spoke to you, none of that was present. Instead, it was, this is a very personal thing to me. And ultimately, I want to give a gift.

27:51And that's when my brain started lighting up. It's like, oh, this is going to be fun. He is in this for all the reasons I'm in this. And that means we can make something very special together. And I think we have. Yeah, yeah, we definitely have. And another question that is sometimes a little tricky to apply, but that has been in my mind for a while since Seth Godin, very well-known author, thinker, just incredibly sage and awesome human being. He reframed for me, which is the reframing of the question, what would you do if you knew you couldn't fail? That's a good question. What would you do if you knew you couldn't fail?

28:29All right, that's freeing. but the way he tweaks that is he said what would you do if you knew you would fail in other words what would you do for which the process alone would make it worth it and for me because i mean we became fast friends very quickly right and i was like okay that's rare for me as an adult number one and i've been banging this around my own little head for so long even if this ends up not making the cut for whatever reason, this seems worth it to me. Yeah. Right? Yeah. Because coming back to the kind of people over activities also, I was like, love hanging out with Elan and connecting.

29:16I'm going to learn a lot. And at the very worst, I learned a lot and we've deepened our relationship. And that stuff just snowballs over time. It transcends a single project. So even if this had not manifested, it would have been worth it. And that's how I try to pick my projects. So when we first started down this path together, I remember I came out, we sort of visited each other back and forth a few times. And I remember every time I would pack a suitcase full of games, right? And we would sit with some of your friends and we'd play games like all night long. And you'd say, I like this one.

29:52I don't like this one. I like this product. But ultimately, we weren't making any progress. We were just learning vocabulary, essentially. And I would go home and my wife would be like, how'd it go? What did you learn? Are you going to make a game together? And I'd be like, I don't know. No, we just hung out and had fun. And she'd be like, wasn't that a huge disappointment? You traveled 2 ,000 miles to go see him. I'm like, no, it's just fun. I'm not disappointed at all. We'll just do it again next month and we'll see how it goes. And we did that like five or six times. And I remember walking away from each one, just thinking like, same thing.

30:24if this goes nowhere, I'm having so much fun. That's so rare. It is rare. And if you can orient your life or professional life, and look, I'm not saying this is possible for everyone, but it's to some extent more possible than people realize. You might not be able to run out and invite Ilan on your podcast and then awkwardly approach him like a sheepish 12-year-old boy to ask him on a date. But taking the lens of picking projects based on creating or deepening relationships and learning slash developing skills, if you just do that over time, it is almost inevitable that you will win, whatever winning means to you.

31:06Yeah, value the process.

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32:26Let's talk a little bit about the origin story. Now, I'll throw out a couple of things here, and we're going to talk about the game development, then we're also going to talk about how to sell this thing. How does that work? Yeah. And it's worth saying, designing a game, I remember you asked me this early on, you started out from the, hey, let's design a game and then we're basically done. And I remember really forcing myself to think through this process because I wanted to explain it to you. No, that's half of it. The other half is selling the game. And just as much work goes into that. And if you're not willing to do it, or if you have no mechanism by which you can do it, might as well not design the game.

33:04Because one without the other, useless. Yeah. Yeah. So it depends on the scale you're going after, right? If you want to make something for your friends, you can do that. Yeah, okay, fair enough. But in this particular case, I mean... You wanted to make something cool and share it, right? Yeah, I wanted to share it. So that kind of dictated parts of the process that we need to weigh really heavily. So the game development process, I mean, we started off looking at the possibilities of modifying existing games, right? So looking at, say, Poetry for a Nanderthal with an alternate set of rules or a different deck plus A, B, or C.

33:42We looked at prototype games that you alluded to earlier, bringing the suitcase, right? So we did that all over the country. Yeah, I showed up. I remember I have this notebook of game ideas, three, 400 in there, and I add more every month. And I remember I picked my favorites, like five or six of them. And I would show up with just the jankiest prototypes. I was like, here's something I scribbled on a few cards. I took some dice and I rubbed out the little nubs on the dice and hand wrote something on all the die faces instead. Let's try playing this weird game. And you were very patient. And you had a lot of vision, thankfully, to look at these just horrible, very hastily created prototypes and say, not this is no fun, let's move on.

34:29But you would always say like, oh, I like this. I like that moment where we had a conversation about what you were going to do next. I like that part. I didn't like the rest of it, but I like that part. And that astute sense of notes, like really thoughtful and forward moving notes was ultimately what guided our conversation. Because then the next time I don't have to pick from 400 games to bring. Now I know like, okay, this cooperative thing, like that conversation aspect. There's only six games I've got like that. Let me bring those six and we'll refine it even farther. Yeah, totally. We can talk about the Toronto trip, the Toronto project.

35:08So that is where things started to gel because we'd had a number of these meetings around the country where we would do a one to kind of three-day sprint of testing, take all these notes. And we'd done a few of these and we've both got a lot going on and your wife would ask you how it went and you're like well not really sure i think we had fun but no game as of yet so we scheduled time i was going to fly to toronto to do a sprint you were going to bring in uh expert game designer sort of game mechanic specialist ken gruel ken and it was like okay this is the trip if we make it happen great If not, we're just going to call a spade a spade.

35:52We seem to not, we're like circling around this thing, but not really getting it done. It was like meeting number eight or nine at that point. Yeah, we tried a lot. And it was during that trip that the very primitive sort of germ of an idea started to resonate, which ended up being Coyote. And I remember a few things. And thank God also for Ken's apparent photographic memory with how things transpired. But we're walking around all over the place in Toronto, the three of us, just spitballing. Then it starts to rain. And we seek shelter. We fail twice, I think, with various coffee shops. No room, no seats, whatever it might be.

36:35end up sitting in this weird kind of multi-purpose building. Yeah. And I remember where we were sitting and we played, I guess in English, it's Hanabi. Hanabi. Hanabi, which is Hanabi in Japanese, which is fireworks. Yeah. And Hana is flower, B in this case is fire. So it's like flower, fire. That's Hanabi. For everybody out there, if you haven't played Hanabi, go try this game. Yeah. It is very special. So we played that game, kind of killing time. Yeah. giving it a shot because you guys had mentioned it. And I was like, okay, this is a very elegant game. And from that, liked the cooperative aspect.

37:15So when people think game, I think most folks are more familiar, maybe exclusively familiar with the sort of winner takes all or team versus team competitive type of game. But I really enjoyed, and I'd seen this in other ways in different capacities, but the cooperative option and the cooperative aspect. So that then gets kind of stuck in the mind and the rain clears up. We go for a walk by the water. And I remember, well, I'll own it. I was kind of stalled. I'll be the kind of hair plugging the drain in the bathtub. Because I was trying to search my mind for game examples, but I was thinking tabletop games because that was the canvas we were sort of painting upon.

38:06And we're walking, we're walking, had quite a bit of caffeine by this point. And it was either you or Ken, I think it was you, who asked, broadly speaking, any kind of game, what games have you really enjoyed? And that's where Rock, Papers, Scissors came up, right? Rochambeau. And I just, as dumb as it might sound. And I said this at the time, I was like, I love rock, paper, scissors. It's just, it is, especially when you play over an extended period of time with friends, maybe there's some alcohol involved or not, you don't need to have involved, but you start to pick up tells, you start to pick up patterns and it's actually very, very fun.

38:47So it's important to note, the moment you bring up rock, paper, scissors in any game design discussion, that's usually the end of the conversation, right? There's nothing to that game. There's three tools. Deploy a tool, determine a winner, and you're done. It is only when you say, let's acknowledge rock, paper, scissors is no fun unless you play multiple times. Because now we've made a very important transition. We're not playing the game anymore. We're playing each other. Yeah. Right? Because I know what you did last time. You think I'm going to throw scissors again, right? And now we're playing each other.

39:20Yes, rock, paper, scissors are the tools by which we're playing each other. But suddenly we're playing a very different game and it starts it cannot start in round one. It starts in round two and it moves forward from there. And once we started having that discussion things started to get really interesting. Yeah, things got interesting and do you want to show the prototype deck? And part of the reason I want to show this prototype deck and we'll describe it for people who aren't watching is quick and dirty is the fucking way to go. And I will just make another recommendation for Stephen Key. So Stephen Key has a book called The One Simple Idea, which is about licensing and creating inventions.

40:03He's got a number of books now. But Stephen has made a gajillion dollars creating games for all the biggies that you can possibly think of. And he uses construction paper and glue you would find in a second grade class. and a handful of markers. I love it. And by and large, that is how he creates these amazing, they can be games, they can be toys. Yeah. He's pretty broad spectrum, but it might be a new way to play basketball, shooting dirty laundry into a hamper, right? Something like that. And he prototypes these things incredibly quickly. And for him, for what he does, that is enough. He is able to put together a pitch.

40:49He's able to sell it. and he's able to develop these amazing passive income streams with these annuities that just come in from all these different places. But that relates to what we're looking at. So I love that we have not even described what Coyote is yet. But that's okay. I think the value of this conversation is to actually talk through the creative process and talk through, I think a lot of people want to make games. This is how you do it. And we went through this two-year journey and we arrived at a very happy outcome. So I'm excited to talk about, well, let me show you the very ugly, very first deck we ever built.

41:26So we had this conversation about rock, paper, scissors. And I knew there was something there because we were talking about my fundamental premise behind all game design is games should not be entertaining. Games should make the players entertaining. And suddenly when you said rock, paper, scissors over time, I was like, oh, that's perfect. But three tools, rock, paper, and scissors, not a very robust tool set, right? We can't really play a game that way. So ran home and started scribbling on cards. These are just blank cards. I took Sharpies. I buy these like by the thousands on Amazon. So I had a ton of these and we just started scribbling.

42:02And so we made a card that says rock and we made a card that says paper and we made a card that says scissors. And we thought, what if we're all on the same team? But what if these cards here are not tools to fight with each other? What if these are a challenge that we have to all solve together? And so we started just putting down a bunch of things. Rock, paper, scissors, rock, rock, paper. And we're like, all right, we'll sit around the table and we'll all just do this pattern. Everyone do scissors now. Everyone do paper. Now everyone do rock. And we've been talking about these different variations and ideas on the walk.

42:35and then we ended up back at your dining room table. Yeah, that's right. With tons. Curiously scribbling. Yeah, scribbling and modifying cards as we went. Exactly. So now the modifiers are really the most interesting thing because the game that I'm describing right now is useless. We can all do scissors and then all do paper. Who cares, right? There's nothing here. But now we have a baseline. We're all going to do this thing. Cool, easy. And then we started doing these modifiers. All players do all blue cards. And so we start scribbling rock, paper, scissors in different colors. And now we've got this modifier.

43:09So now I'm going to do scissors, but then we're all going to do paper. And then back to you just doing rock and things like that. And so then it was like, okay, well, skip a player after every red card. Okay, shout every blue card, right? Then we started writing all these crazy modifiers. I'm just putting all these cards all over the table because the challenge got more and more interesting. And then it was like, okay, so something interesting is possible here. Now, what if instead of just splashing cards all over the paper, what if we were responsible for this? What if one at a time, everyone had to add a new card to the table to make this challenge harder and harder and harder?

43:45And that's when we started talking about the vocabulary of this game. What are these cards? What makes this thing harder? Rock and paper and scissors very quickly got eliminated from the game because they're so boring. So we started talking about, well, okay, what if you're making a peace sign? And then you came up with, well, what if you pose like a ballerina on a card? And what if you slap the shoulder of the person next to you on a card? And what if you have to, I remember one of our earliest notes was, eliminate all shouting cards because that was no fun at all. Yeah, we tested that and then that got old real quick.

44:17Right, exactly. And also, as we're playtesting, right, as we're inventing mechanics and testing different things, We play for a few rounds and be like, okay, that was okay. But what do you guys think of this? Okay, we like this aspect. Great. Let's make four more of those cards of different colors. And then we play it again. Yeah. And then we play it again. And then we iterate and then we play it again. That's right. And we ended up with, I mean, spreadsheets full of different cards. And this is all still now in cooperative mode. All in cooperative mode. At that point. But over the next week, I would say we designed 80 % of the game.

44:54We were at this stalled at 1 % mode for months, and then in a matter of days, 80 % done. Because we found this, every time we played some version of this, the immediate answer when we were done playing was, let's go again. Yeah. Is that the litmus test for you? I mean, in terms of the indicators that something is worth further development, right? Because you have 400 in your notebook, right? so you're not going to develop all of those. What are some of the, could be a water field that you have, but what are some of the indicators where you're like, oh, okay. So there's two things to talk about here.

45:34Certainly, Let's Play Again is a great one. But to set your mind in a place where you're willing to say, imagine this, but tweaked, but something a little different. There's this principle I love called the zero effect. Zero effect. Yeah, zero effect. It's from a movie, I think in the late 80s, early 90s, somewhere around there called the zero effect. And there's this one scene where they explain what the zero effect is. It is as follows. If you've lost your car keys and you're looking for your car keys, here you are in your living room, you're looking for a car keys. The chances of you finding your car keys are very low because there's so many things in this room that are not your car keys.

46:13So your chances of finding that one thing, very, very low. If instead you are trying to find anything, your chances of success are suddenly at a hundred percent. You will find something as long as you don't care what it is that you found. That's my favorite premise for brainstorming and for early testing. Don't lock in your head. I'm looking for this particular thing. I must find X. I must find X because the chances that you're going to find that thing are almost non-existent. But if you can keep your brain open and say, I'm just looking for something. I don't care what it is, something, anything.

46:53And I'll tweak it later. I'll play with it later. I'll find some way to consider this thing I found, my car keys. As long as you're willing to make that leap, brainstorming becomes a pleasure. And does that take the form of what if blah? What if we blah? What if this car did blah? Is it a series of what if? And you're not scared for all of those to fail, right? Because you can come up with those all day long. And that's what we did, right? Over the next few days, that process, what if blah, let's try it. What if blah, let's try it. What if whatever, let's try it. And as long as the answer is always, let's try it, you will 100 % find what you're looking for.

47:35All right. So let's make some recommendations for people listening or watching. What books or resources would you recommend for people who are interested in game development? And I want to reiterate also, whether you think you're playing games or not, you're already playing games in life. So for me, this is a way of putting on a table what we've already implicitly agreed to in our own lives in ways that we generally don't realize, which is we're all playing games. Now, what does that mean? That means that beyond Maslow's basic rungs on the ladder, shelter, warmth, food, et cetera, at some point, particularly as adults, maybe it's before you go to school, maybe it's when you're in college, but you have decided to play or you have just ended up drafting into a game with certain rules, certain conditions for winning or losing, certain ranking mechanisms.

48:40And step number one is figuring out what games you're playing. So I would suggest that learning about building games helps you to put on x-ray vision glasses where you start to see the world is comprised of tons of games. Yeah, it's so true. And you start to dive deeper into game theory, like what is the prisoner's dilemma? What is a zero-sum game? Like if you can start to identify those very fundamental game design concepts in the real world, you can jump to the end of a conversation so much faster. You can avoid so many missteps because everything follows within reason. Everything follows game design principles because this practice, this art form has been so well studied and so well researched and so well documented that you get to take advantage of all of that.

49:37And I love that. I use that for my relationships. I use that playing with my kids. I use that at work all the time. It's just, there's these fundamental principles of game design. And I'll talk about a book I love that illustrates them. But yeah, they can be applied to anything. You're right. You're playing a game all the time. And the first step is to be aware that you are playing a game. All right. So I got two books. Let's hear it. One is A Theory of Fun by Raph Koster. Raph Koster? R-A-P-H. Raph. It'll outline all these fundamentals. It is the first game design book I ever read. It is the one I go back to and refer to the most often.

50:16It's just got everything, and the author is brilliant. And go read that book. The second one is going to be a little controversial. Memoirs of a Geisha? Yeah. It's called Don't Shoot the Dog. Oh, yeah. This is an exceptional book. Exceptional book. It is not explicitly about game design. It is not at all about game design. But here's the thing. This book, the fundamental premise of this book is you are trying to teach a companion, a dog, to behave in a certain way. And the answer to how best to do that is, when things go wrong at least, not to blame the dog. is to fundamentally change the way you operate and the way you convey information and the way you look at the world in order to better relate to your dog and to the way that the dog understands and sees the world.

51:13It is the best game design principle I have ever encountered in my life. And true, it has nothing to do with game design. But when you're designing a game, you're designing it for a target, for someone who isn't you, and you're not even going to be in the room when they encounter it. And to have in your brain from the very first step, every problem that comes up is my problem, not theirs. Every responsibility is my responsibility, not theirs. And if you can get that in your head and design games that way, those are the games I have found that are the most successful. This is Don't Shoot the Dog, terrible title, but it is the fundamental starting point that I recommend to anyone who's interested in dog training.

52:04And Karen Pryor is one of the popularizers of clicker training as a way of shaping behavior. I believe she had experience with marine mammals, which by the way, you can't whack on the butt with the newspaper to punish them. In other words, negative reinforcement. So how do you do it? You use positive reinforcement and use clickers or whistles or different tools. And I believe the back of the book, people will be able to fact check this, but it basically says, whether you want to get your dog to heal, your cat to stop laying on the kitchen table, or your mother-in-law to stop nagging you, the principles are all the same.

52:42And at the end of it, like you said, is this radical ownership of, it may not be your fault, but it is your responsibility. And in a lot of cases, certainly with game design and instructions and so on, it is actually your fault. Yeah. If people are confused, it is your fault. Yeah. Before I started Exploding Kittens, I designed games for friends. And I just had the hardest time. When I wasn't in the room, people were not enjoying those games. And it was only once I read that book that I realized the fault is absolutely mine. because I'm trying to get them to have as much fun as I want them to have.

53:17And the fact that they're not, I keep blaming them. And that's so wrong. So what did you do? How did you fix that? So one, there's basically two parts. One starts with design. One says, the game has to be so simple that it is almost self-correcting. And I have to strip out all complication. I have to remove all nuance. I need anytime I'm like thinking of the rules and I say, if this happens, then this happens. Except if the moment I say, except I've gone down a wrong path, right? Like I need to get rid of all of that stuff. That was the first part. And then the second part is in writing the actual instructions and figuring out, like, if I'm sitting in the room, you're going to get this game because I'm going to explain it and I'm going to be enthusiastic.

54:05And when you ask a question, I'm going to answer the question. And when you get confused, I'm going to clarify it. Like I can a hundred percent do that, but a piece of paper trying to do that same thing, I have to write it as if I'm in the room and I have to anticipate those questions and I have to cut them off before they come up and I have to correct behavior because I know exactly where you're going to go off course and fix it in the instructions. And that kind of one, two punch changed my game design from, yeah, like 10 % of the people get this to like 95 % of the people got this. Yeah. One aspect, I mean, there's so many aspects, but one aspect of this that I enjoyed was related to the instructions.

54:43And so number one, you make it really clear in the instructions, which we both poured over ad nauseum, but reading is the worst way to learn a game. Go watch this video, QR code, right? So that's number one. But if you're going to put it into text, and I think I'm pretty good at this, but I was very impressed with your ability to identify anything that could be misunderstood or that wasn't yet defined or that could be taken with another more broader connotation that would steer people off course. And the number of edits in that Google Doc. I mean, it's got to be in the hundreds, right? From all of us, hundreds and hundreds of edits.

55:20Yeah. So the most important skill is you will write better instructions. You will convey information to people better if you can clear your mind. If you can approach any set of instructions from the perspective of the things I know, I do not yet know. And the words that come out of my mouth have to not only fill my brain with the required knowledge. Basically beginner's mind, right? Putting yourself in the place of someone who has never seen this before. Exactly. And it's so hard to do because you have this information in your head. It must be there, Otherwise, you're not going to be able to explain the thing.

55:55But to back all the way up and say, I'm just going to split my brain in two. There's this one reading script, and I know the information I have to get out. But the other half is the recipient of that script, and it knows nothing. If you can do that, and it's so hard, it takes so much practice. If you can do that, you're going to not only be able to design good games and write good instructions, but you're also going to be able to just converse more effectively, just out in the world in general. You mentioned, I think it was two minutes to learn, 15 minutes to play. Yeah. What other golden rules or guiding tenets do you have for yourself when you're doing game design within Exploding Kittens?

56:39If a component does not need to be in the game, remove it from the game. Right. So an example of that would be, we had these chits or like little chips, like poker chips. Like bingo chips. Like bingo chips that we were using for lives or strikes. Yeah. And turns out you don't need that. Yeah, because you've got a whole thing of cards right here. Just use those. You can use cards by flipping them over and using the back of the card. Exactly. That's a perfect example, right? We have this thing where we're like, hey, you know what would be fun is if everybody had a big hand of cards and we're going to play cards and you make decisions.

57:11I'm like, I get that. Most games you play, you have a hand of cards and you're going to play a card and you're making a decision. That's awesome. But you know what? That's a private moment. And you reveal a card. Every game you've ever played, when you play Uno, you've got a hand of cards, you're making a decision, you play a card, you've revealed what card you just played. And I remember thinking, is there a simpler version of that? And it turns out there is. And the simpler version in Coyote is... Take some cards, put them all face up on the table, and then decide which one you're going to pick.

57:41that's very similar to having a deck of cards. But now it's public. Yeah, it's public. Right? And also, when the competitive version is brought in, which is the way that I like to play, the way I would suggest people play, but you can warm up with cooperative. If you have somebody in your life or in your family you just cannot lose without creating a huge pain in the ass, then the cooperative mode is really fun. But the competitive mode then allows the group decision on which card to play potentially, although ultimately it's individual, right? That has implications for cooperative when it's public.

58:19Yeah. But also for competitive. Yeah. There are a number of tweaks made to this, but I mentioned earlier sabotaging. So we had competitive, but different minds are wired for different games. Yeah. And so God forbid what happens to you is what happened to one of my employees who was playtesting this, where one of the people in the group was a mathematician who also is a high-level chess player, if I remember correctly. And he just smoked everyone because he had the mind for it. So what do you do for that? Well, we ended up, this took a lot of playtesting to ultimately land on this. And I want to ask you about playtesting, particularly if it's kind of hands off the wheel and you have people playing the game without you.

59:00Yeah. Terrifying. Yeah. And this comes back to the underdog being able to win, not getting my ass smoked and magic over and over again by someone who's just got better hardwiring for it. And that's where the attack cards came from. So there are these attack cards in the deck, which to the simplification side, you can play in cooperative mode to modify a card. I don't want to get too in the weeds. I want to give you more credit for this because I don't think you're taking enough credit. So, all right. Let me phrase this a different way. So the basic premise of the game is we have a whole bunch of activities on the table, right?

59:34Ballerina, peace sign, whatever it is. Thumbs up, thumbs down, smile, frown. Lean and make a fart noise. Yeah, exactly. Lean and make a fart noise. So we got all these things that we're all going to do. And then on top of that - It's a fan favorite. That's right. It's such a good card. On top of that, we have all these modifier cards. And they modify, you have to skip a player after this one, ignore this card, do this one twice. Those are generally the coyote cards. The coyote cards. And you had this great idea. You said, because some players are naturally gifted at this game, far more so than others, and because some players are going to naturally fall behind and they need a way to sabotage the first place.

1:00:09If you're in last place, you need a way to sabotage the first place player. If you've ever played Mario Kart, you know this feeling very well. And you said, what if we took some of these modifiers? All players have to do all the blue cards with one hand instead of two. Yeah. Or with Tyrannosaurus. or Tyrannosaurus arms. You have to do all your movements with Tyrannosaurus arms. What if instead of playing that on all blue cards on the table, what if you just put that, slide it right in front of another player and now only they have to do it for every single one of their turns that you've put a curse on them, right?

1:00:41You've attacked. The last place player has attacked the first place player. And I remember thinking, Tim, you're just like a natural game designer. That's such a nice moment and it's such an easy modification. And of course, my answer was, I don't know, let's try it. And then we tried it and it was glorious. And I love moments like that for two reasons. One is because you had learned at that point to speak like a game designer. Instead of saying, I think we just need to sabotage people. Instead, you said, some people are really good at this game. We have to address that. Some people are naturally bad at this game.

1:01:13We need to give them a tool. And those terms speaking in that language, armed with that vocabulary, suddenly the answer to you became so clear. Like, here's how we solve those problems. That's great. I guarantee you would not have been capable of that when we started this process. No, I wouldn't have had the... Sometimes artists talk about the visual library, right? Just the exposure to different types of artwork, different forms, different silhouettes, different structures so that they can pull from that visual library to inform whatever they're trying to build or solve for. And it's the same with game design, same with everything.

1:01:50You need to build your ABCs so you can convey what you're trying to say in terms that are solvable, if that makes any sense. Yeah, totally. You're a quick study too. Helped getting the books that you recommended. I'm not going to dox my friend in question, but as long-term listeners will know, I was in a former life neuroscience major. And then in the last 10 years have funded a lot of science. And I always have just had this hankering and this dream of being involved in neuroscience. It continues to this day. And in the process of building this game, and this is not how I necessarily sell it because this is going to sound terrible, but through many experiments with different companies and so on, I've concluded that even though generally Americans, I'll throw it on Americans, I'm American, say they want to be smarter.

1:02:48They will typically not pay for something that is designed to make them smarter, unless it's a magic pill. And then sometimes the answer is yes. But what I was hoping to also do with this game is to create something that would, and this has not been proven, there's no randomized controlled study examining this, although that might change at some point, is to design something that would help those players who are not good at this, or the people who are in the middle of the bell curve, or the people who are good, to get better. And for people who are interested in looking at some, they're not perfect analogs, but they're similar.

1:03:28People can check out the Wisconsin Card Sorting Test, WCST. It's a neurophysiological test used to assess cognitive flexibility and executive functions, particularly the ability to shift cognitive sets and learn from feedback. All right. So participants must sort cards based on an initially unknown rule, which changes after a certain number of correct sorts. Now, this is not a perfect parallel because that does not in and of itself make for a fun game, right? So fun number one, lots of probably rank ordered like one, two, three, four, five, but could I also Trojan horse in cognitive training? And I think the answer, this is from a lay perspective, and obviously I'm biased because I'm involved in every step of making this thing, but I think it does the trick.

1:04:18And what people will notice is, and you know this too, the game starts off so easy. And people are like, there's nothing to it. And then once a modifier or two come out, people are like, oh, oh, wait a second. This is getting really tricky. And if, for instance, I've had lifelong insomnia, you want to sleep better? Play this game before you go to bed. And by the end, you will feel like you just did a workout, a full brain workout for your cognition. You know what I love about that part? I learned to play the drums years and years ago. And I remember I would learn these new patterns. and it was like, you know, your right hand has to do this and your left hand has to do this and your right leg has to do this.

1:05:02And I remember thinking, no way, like no way I can't do that. And you work at it and you work at it and you work at it. And suddenly it starts to click just a little bit, right? Like, Ooh, my right hand did the right thing. And it's like, you can feel new like neurons coming to life, right? Like your brain is doing something that five minutes ago, you could not do. This is the first game I've ever played that does that exact same thing. And I remember the first time I felt that way in a very early play test, my eyes got all wide. And I was like, there's something magical going on here. Like, I know I'm psyching myself out, but I feel new things happening in my brain because five minutes ago, I could not do this pattern.

1:05:42And now I can. And we can go all the way around the table and you can add a new card. And I will still be able to do this pattern that I couldn't do just five minutes ago. Yeah, totally. And what's cool as well is you get to see just how specialized certain minds are and where you might have an Achilles heel. So for instance, and this is true for some folks, we have the modifiers ranked by difficulty because ultimately with Coyote, you're in charge of how hard you make the game. You are in full charge of how easy, moderate, or difficult you make it. And we didn't even talk about how this game is designed to make you a game designer.

1:06:21We'll talk about that with the blank cards. But this is a sort of creativity unlock as much as a game. That's the intention behind it, which is part of the reason that I'm really excited to see what the hell it does when it's released into the wild, which it effectively is now. Now, the specialization piece, I'll just speak to that. So for instance, for me, skipping turns, skipping players, it is a blind spot. It is an Achilles heel for me. That's true for quite a few folks. But for other people, for instance, if we're going around the table, most people would be familiar with, you know, we will rock you, right?

1:06:58We will rock you. So it's like boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. So the way you play the game as you go around is you go boom, boom. You can hit the table with your hands. You can do it with close fists. You could probably clap it if you want, but it's boom, boom, and then one person does the move. Let's take the ballet where you're going to do a pirouette. You have to do the motion and you have to say the motion. Then these two things can be split or confused later. We won't get too deep into that. Then it's boom, boom, next person, boom, boom, next person. It goes around and then it gets more and more complicated.

1:07:34I remember when we were first experimenting with the modifier that said, okay, it's now three bumps instead of two. So it's boom, boom, boom. And then, and there were, I remember, I'm not going to call them out, but there's one person who just could not do it. I know. Right. And I was one of those people. My brain would start melting out of my ears at that point. I don't know why though. Yeah. It's weird. So they're very specific. You'll, you'll find each person will have a super strength and a super weakness and you will figure it out by playing this game. Yeah. Yeah. And just from a game design perspective also, I'd love to hear you talk about finding the sweet spot.

1:08:09I mean, we could talk about Bushnell's Law, right? Of Atari fame, right? The game, you know, I'm paraphrasing here, but a good game is easy to learn and difficult to master. Yeah. But how do you, in the course of playtesting, working with prototypes, find the sweet spot of difficulty, right? Because with this game, well, through making this game, I've just really come to appreciate how hard it is to create a game where people experience that sweet spot. Because if you were to take Coyote and make it too easy, what a simple game to make. Sure. Right? Oh, yeah. If you wanted to make it basically impossible and not fun to play, also very easy.

1:08:52But to find that sweet spot on the graph is incredibly challenging. Yeah. So the way I think about this is when you first encounter any game, the first thought that has to go into your brain is, I can do that. You hear it described and you have to think, I can do that. And then you have to try the game and that has to be reinforced. The game has to say, yep, you can do that. And you have to feel like, okay, I thought I could do it. I can do it. This is great. But that's only going to last a few seconds. The next thought that has to go into your brain is, I understand the path to mastery. I understand how to get better at this.

1:09:34And then the next thought is, and I can do that too. So you have to see the moment a modifier card comes out or the moment any complication happens in your favorite game, it has to stop you dead in your tracks. It has to be like, oh, the thing I just did to start the game and was really good at. I thought I could do it. I could do it. That's not going to work here. I have to rethink my strategy or I have to get better at something else. And then those two follow-up thoughts have to show up in quick succession. I know what I have to do and I can do that too. And that's really the art to me of that ramping up of game design.

1:10:12And you have to keep hitting that. I think I can do that. Yes, you can. Now you can't anymore, but you know what you have to do and you can do that too. and then that's going to get blocked. And you think, okay, now I know what I have to do and I can do that too. And you have to just keep hitting those two things and just rinse and repeat over and over and over again. And if you can hit that, you are just holding somebody's hand from the beginning of the game to the end of the game. And they're going to get great at it. They're going to achieve that sense of mastery over time. Yeah, and if you listening or watching have any game that you consider simple that you enjoy, rest assured there was an absurd absurd amount of development and testing and revising that went into it just to give you an example like this is by all outward appearances a very simple game the 3 to 8 players you could probably play with more 10 minutes, it says age is 10 plus I've seen people playing with their kids who are much younger and it's actually hilarious and super fun there are so many levers you can pull here, right?

1:11:20You have the action cards, which are these cute little salamander cards with the different motions and gestures and so on. You've got just the sheer number of cards. How many variants do you have? How many total cards do you have? How many coyote versus attack cards? When you have a fully shuffled deck, what does that actually look like? There's so many different variables that you have to think through. Yeah. One of my favorite things is we're starting to see people compete now. So we set up this page of here are table configurations. Here's like an array of cards in exactly this order with exactly these modifiers.

1:11:54This one's hard. This one's impossible. This one is going to kill you. And we've started to see just, and you know, the game is barely available so far, but we started to see some people try to tackle those challenges. Okay, I didn't even know that. It's incredible. So where this came from also is in The 4-Hour Chef, a million years ago, came out in 2012, which is actually a book about accelerated learning, confusingly. But putting that aside, there were a few recipes in that book. I think one was called Dragon Force Chacon or something like that, which was named after this video game track that people found impossible to play on guitar.

1:12:30And then there was something a la ancienne, which was this just ludicrously complex French dish that involved fish. And I was like, okay, look, if you've done everything up to this point and you want to take a quantum leap forward and try something that is considered effectively impossible by most people, here you go. And so that's what we created on this particular page. I will just say, having tested all of the challenges on that page, I can do exactly one of them. The last two are so hard. They're really hard. And we've already seen someone, a table of six people succeed at the middle. They've already done it.

1:13:09That's nuts. Yeah. I've never seen anyone do the crazy hard one. Yeah. But it's coming. Yeah. So people can check it out. And there may or may not be a bunch of excitement around that. So I will just say there may be incentives later to be good at this game. I will leave it at that for now. I tell you what, we're going to come back to some of the blank cards and we'll talk about those features. But let's talk about a bit more of the process of making any game. We can talk about Coyote specifically, of course, because you have a process for this. How many games per year do you guys put out on average?

1:13:42We do. So it's funny. I actually built this out as a graph. So our first year, we did one. Our second year, we did two. Our third year, we did two again. Last year, we did 14. This year, we'll do 23, I think. Wow. Yeah. It's a lot. It's really fun. We built this incredibly robust pipeline from design all the way through to testing and then sales and marketing. and I feel obligated to just keep that pipeline full because it's such a beautiful thing we built. So we do a lot of games. All right, let's get some info that we wouldn't normally have any access to. All right. If you do an 80-20 analysis, it's not going to be exactly 80-20, but you get where I'm going.

1:14:25On your best-selling games, what's on the leaderboard? What are the top X number of games? Five, three, four, whatever the number. Up until last year, number one, the top selling game in the world amongst all games was exploding kittens. That's nuts, man. It's nuts. It's nuts. It makes no sense. But I'll tell you something I'm even more proud of. It's now number two. Number one is a game called hurry up chicken butt. Hurry up chicken butt is a game I designed with my four year old daughter and she did most of the design. Yeah. And it is outselling exploding kittens. Like it is selling one game every four seconds.

1:15:07Wow. Yeah. It's nuts. And it was designed by a four-year-old. Okay. So we got a hurry up chicken butt. Yeah. Exploding kittens. Yeah. The next few spots in the like global sales are constantly shifting. Like everybody's fighting for those, but our entries into that list, which are constantly shifting poetry for Neanderthals is usually number three. Throw throw burrito is usually either number five or six. and the rest are just totally random. Yeah. Okay, got it. So what has made Hurry Up Chicken Butt a success? So remember what I said, if you have the best design game in the world... And by the way, when we spoke, I think, two years ago, you were just beginning to talk about this.

1:15:49I don't think it had launched at that point. Yeah. It has been an absolute rocket ship. What are the magic ingredients? Okay. Why has it worked? Because not all games do that. Yeah. No, they don't. And you've had now with the number of games that EK Exploding Gains has developed, you've had a chance to see a lot of different ideas come through the doors and go out the doors. Yeah. Yeah. Some games last a season. Some games last a decade. So Hurry Up Chicken Butt in particular. I wrote a list of the things I wanted that game to accomplish. And my daughter had all these ideas. Here's what I want to do.

1:16:23And you're going to do this. And you're going to run up and jump up and down. But I had a list of things that I needed to know were in this game in order for me as a parent to buy it for my kid. And they were as follows. The game has to be as much fun for me to play as it is for my daughter. That's a hard one. That killed most designs that we came up with. Number two, my daughter has to be able to beat me at this game even though I'm not letting her win. Holy crap, is that a hard one. Number three, the game cannot have any losers. It can have a winner, but it cannot have any losers. Those three were like my guiding lights.

1:17:06It was like, I need to check off these three checkboxes for this game to be good. And we worked on a hundred million designs. Like she's great. She'll just be like, oh, you don't like this one? Here's another one. You don't like that one? And here's another one. She just kept firing them off. And we finally got to this game that hit all three of those. That, as I said earlier, is only half the battle. That's, yeah, that's the necessary but not sufficient. Exactly. So now we have a game that I'm in love with, that we play every single night, that she can beat me at regularly. And I am trying my absolute hardest to beat her.

1:17:39And this four-year-old is kicking my ass at this game. Love that. Love it. And I'm having a blast, right? So this is my first time hearing about these criteria, just for people listening. This is all new to me. When my daughter got old enough to start playing games, right around when she turned four, we went out and bought all these games and I just hated them. They were so boring and I hated playing. And so we just designed our own. We just made them better. And it was important for me to have that list because unless I know what success looks like, I'll just stay in brainstorming mode forever.

1:18:10So I made that list, finally hit it, and then we entered into part two. And here my daughter has very little to do with it, right? Here's where I sit down with the marketing and sales team. And I was like, what the hell are we going to call this thing? And we went through a thousand different names. Yeah, I know the feeling. Yeah, yeah, we did that. But once I had like 10 names that I really liked, we sat down with my daughter and all her friends and I would just read them off. And there was no contest. Like, it was just, I got to hurry up chicken butt and they're like, just laughing hysterically, jumping up and down.

1:18:44They didn't even want to hear the rest of the names. I was like, okay, sold. So that was a really nice step forward. It was like, I know I got a game that's like just fire for kids. Like they're just so excited about this. And the next thing was, all right, well, what do we make this box look like? The game itself involves a character and a die shaker and some sound effects. Like it's got all this stuff packed into this character, this chicken. And I was like, I can't just hide that. Like I have to put that in a box where you can see it. And that was really hard. The difference between box design for an iPhone and a game is an iPhone will spend$100 on that box with the materials and making it beautiful.

1:19:28And when you open your iPhone, you take the box and you throw it away. In a game, you've got about 40 cents to spend on the box and it has to last forever. It sucks. The equation is totally backwards. But I needed a thing that displayed the chicken and told you it made noise and let you shake around the die and still hold its structure as a box so that you could remove this thing, play with it, and then reinsert it into the box in a way that isn't going to mess with the integrity of the box, the structural integrity. So that was really hard, but we finally solved that. Did you do that before or after you started testing the waters with retailers?

1:20:06After. After. Yeah. Okay. I don't want to hijack, but whenever it makes sense, I would love to know how, at what point you start testing the waters. Yeah. Well, we do this backwards. So most people, and when we started, you have to do it the opposite way. You have to walk in to those sales pitches and you have to say, here's the final product. Look how beautiful it is. You don't have to trust us that this isn't going to sell. You can look at this thing and know that it's going to sell. for this game, luckily, because we have a really good track record, we walked in with no box. All I walked in with was a rough idea, name scribbled on a piece of paper.

1:20:49And I said, trust me, this is going to be great. We're going to solve everything. It's going to be amazing. And they said, okay, yeah, sold. Let's buy it. That comes from 10 years of pitching them hit after hit after hit. I got it. So if it were earlier in Exploding Kittens existence, you go in with the finished box. Yeah, they're never taking a flyer on that. Who creates the finished box? Do you guys create it in-house? How do you prototype something like that? Yeah, we have an incredible team. We have a large-scale printer. We print on actual cardboard. We have a paper folder, right? So we can actually build the boxes, which was an investment.

1:21:26That's not off-the-shelf machinery. But normally, whatever manufacturer you're working with, they send you a prototype box, right? Because they make it and they want you to see the final product. And that's what you go into the sales meetings with. You say like, look, here's the box. Here's how much it's going to weigh. Here's the final presentation. We've been working on it for a year and a half. Here it is. I walk into those meetings like, I got an idea. I've been working on it for three weeks. I want you to buy it right now. I don't have any materials to show you. So it's a different kind of pitch that I'm very proud of because I've earned that, right?

1:21:59And we haven't ever let them down. So in the case of Coyote, there was a lot of playtesting that was done before we ended up in line review meetings. Yeah, wow, we skipped that whole part, didn't we? Yeah, yeah. All right. So could you talk about your secret cabal of families? Yeah, yeah. Secret cabal of families, I love it. All right. Another chapter for your memoir. Yeah, right. That's a good title there. So here's how most game companies test games. if you had partnered with a different games company, here's what your experience would have been like. All right, we got a game. We really like it.

1:22:34It's really fun. Lots of internal testing. Everyone's on board. We now need external testing. And they go to these market research groups and they pull strangers in and they sit in a room with a one-way mirror and they show the game and they play the game with people they don't know and they order in some crappy catered lunch and they play the game and then they rate it on a scale of one to 10 and they fill out this form that's like, here's what I liked and here's what I didn't like and here's what I would improve. And then you get to watch those videos and they present you back all these forms and you get to make a determination.

1:23:14Okay, nobody plays games like that. You don't play games with strangers. When was the last time you played a board game with a stranger? Can't even remember. It doesn't happen, right? Right? The testing procedure that all these other companies go through is fundamentally flawed. They're using a resource because it's the only resource that exists. So I sat down with, that's what we did our first time. We went through one of those companies and they gave us all the results. And I looked at these results and I was like, oh my God, we just burned$25 ,000 on this thing and it's useless. So I realized at that moment, because nothing better exists, we're going to have to build it ourselves.

1:23:47So I started reaching out to, at first, our Kickstarter community, and then our Discord community, and then our Reddit community as we grow and grow and grow, and said, look, I got a bunch of prototypes. I need families and friends who get together regularly to play games, and I'm going to mail you a free game. You don't even have to send it back to me. It's yours forever. You get this amazing prototype. All I ask in return is, upon receiving it within 24 hours, you play the game with your friends and family and you record the session and you send me that video. And that's it. That's all I want in return.

1:24:22And within about 12 months, we had 400 families sign up for this thing. They are called our kiddie test pilots. They're this incredible group of enthusiastic game players that give us the best feedback. And we don't have them fill out a questionnaire. All we ask them at the end of the test session, we say, look into the camera and answer one question. The only question we care about, do you want to play again? And we know a game is ready when everybody looks into that lens and says, hell yes. And that's it. That's our testing process. What are some of the pass fail marks or green versus red signals that you look for?

1:25:05In other words. I imagine the response rate could vary, but you don't know if that's because people are busy or if it's the wrong time of year, or maybe they looked at the game, the box and so on, and it just didn't sell them. So they didn't play it. Is that something you pay attention to? Are the people, I'm sure I'm not the only person wondering this, if they're part of this special VIP get free game group, are they disincentivized to say, hell no, I would not play this game again. So do you get a false positive signal? How do you think through what constitutes a thumbs up versus a thumb sideways versus a thumbs down?

1:25:45There are a lot of false positives, for sure. And there's no way I can solve that problem. We prompt them in advance. We're like, look, we need honesty. This game will get great if you tell us that something's broken with it. Like we need to know that. And they're motivated because we also send them the final version of the game. Right? So they know that's coming. They know a better version is coming if they help us make it better. So some of the problem is solved that way, but not all of it. So that's why the video is so important. If they say we had a great time and you're watching, you're like, yeah, they're not having a great time.

1:26:17Count the number of eye rolls, right? Or, you know, a great one. They'll take the instructions. I love this. They'll open the instructions. and when you see that, eyes go wide and they inhale. Pull back and they're like, it's like, oh, fuck. Instruction apnea. Yeah, something. That's terrible, right? That's really important and there's no survey in the world they can fill out that's going to tell me that. You need to watch the moment to see the instructions. They may not even realize they're doing it. Yeah, exactly. So how are they going to report it? And that's why the video is so important. We have very specific instructions for the video.

1:26:52What are they? Because I'm wondering How in the hell do you review 400 videos? Oh, well, one, we watch them at like 4x speed. And two is we've got a whole team of people that watch them and they flag moments. They don't even say why this moment is important. Something happened here. Something happened here. I'm going to go on to the next video now. And then the next group of people will go through and look at those flags and say, oh, they're big, deep inhale, rules confusion. Nerd question. What do you use software-wise for flagging stuff? Vimeo. Vimeo. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. So you have people upload their videos to Vimeo?

1:27:24Exactly. Got it. So this whole process takes months and it's really important. And the other thing is, like I got 400 test families, but I'm only going to send out five games at a time. The reason is I need to collect that feedback, make changes and send out the next batch. Otherwise I've got 10 results for a version and it's used. I know what, I know what the next five are going to be like. Cause I saw them on the first five. I got it. So is it then, just to state my understanding, with the kitty test pilots, you basically have, you're not sending out the same version to 400, 600 people at once.

1:27:59Five at a time. Five at a time. And then you look at that cohort and see what comes back. It's always the same stuff. Then you tweak, and then it goes out to the next group. Exactly, the next five. Over what period of time do you get a prototype to the max number who are going to receive it? It usually, I would say six to eight months. We're tweaking two things. One is we're tweaking gameplay. But much more commonly, we're tweaking the instructions. Because gameplay has already survived internal testing. So we know the game is fun. If we know this game is fun, and then we watch a video of people not having fun, chances are it's the instructions, not the game.

1:28:36And so that's what we start attacking at that moment. Got it. What are some of the risks of internal testing? Because I've always wondered, for instance, When I have, as I'm doing right now, doing a bunch of writing and I have people proofreading or test reading my writing, I do not only do it with professional writers. I mean, they're very good. And I know I'm very fortunate to know some amazing writers, but they're also a little too close to the material, right? It's like a travel writer who can't stop looking at their travel experience through the lens of a writer. They have lost the ability to just travel and have fun.

1:29:11Yeah, yeah. What are some of the risks, if any, of internal testing? So you and I have the same instinct here. I remember when we were testing this game internally, hadn't gone out the door yet. This game. This game, Coyote, yeah. I remember you would say, hey, can you show me test results? But can you have your accounting team test it instead of your game design team? And I remember thinking like, yeah, that's what we do. I'm not interested in the game design team's results. So I would show you the accounting team results and I would show you the sales team's results who hadn't even ever seen the game.

1:29:44Our internal testing starts out with the game design team, of course, but very quickly has to move on to the other teams, specifically the other teams who have never seen the game and don't know the background. Because those are really the only tests that we care about. So your instinct is perfect there. And I'm very happy to say you didn't have to teach us that. We already knew that part. I mean, if I'm teaching you anything, I don't know what it would be other than my obsessive focus on, I'm sorry, for the volume of email and the volume of text messages and the volume of everything. Every single one of those made the game better.

1:30:20Truly. Truly. I mean, okay, look, we've only done, we've done, I think, two partnerships total. Three partnerships total. We did a game with Penn Jillette of Penn & Teller. We did a game with Jeff Probst of Survivor. And now we've done a game with Tim Ferriss. You probably sent more notes than the other two combined. I sent a lot of notes. Sent a lot of notes. I really had a blast with it. And I remember this moment, and I'm wondering if this happened before or after the line review meetings. I think it might have been afterwards, but you could place it for me because this is my first game and I don't put my name on anything, right?

1:30:59That was part of the very truthful pitch. It's not like one of, you know, I don't have Tim Ferriss microwave ancient love. Yeah, right. And, you know, Tim Ferriss, you know, sneakers. And then just as an aside, I have a Tim Ferriss game. It's like, no, no, no. I don't put my name on anything. So I take it very, very seriously. And I think it was, tell me if I'm getting this wrong. Pretty sure it was Carly. It was amazing. Carly's the president of the Telenkins. Carly's incredible. Because there's always a fear, for me at least, where it's like, in maybe internally i think it's great and then it gets released into the wild and then oh shit yeah there's a real problem like houston we have a problem yeah and you can't take it back right so what do you do and i remember carly i want to say sent a text to me she was in i want to say germany at some type of gaming convention or meeting of distributors i don't remember the exact context, but she said Coyote was bell of the ball.

1:32:03She's like, you would not believe we had an entire huge room full of people playing, smashing on the tables over and over and over and over again. And I was like, whew. Yeah. Isn't that a great feeling? Here we go. LFG. She sent me a video of that. So just to set the stage there, there's 2000 people at this hotel of the like 25 hotels that are part of this convention. and there's one games room and there's like 10 tables in there. And the idea is there should be a different game at every table and everyone's testing out the games and sampling them. And we put Coyote on one table and almost immediately people started gathering around.

1:32:43And so those people said, can we just grab another copy and we'll just put it on the next table just so not everyone has to gather around this one table because it looks so intriguing. And so they time Carly sent me a video, it was at every table in the room. It was just an entire hotel playing this one game because nobody wanted to play anything else. Yeah. Wild. It was so neat. It was so neat. And how gratifying. We've been killing ourselves on this thing. And to see an audience receive it and say, thank you for the gift. Yeah. Yeah, totally. And also, I mean, I said it to you guys. And look, it says, Technically, it says age 10 plus.

1:33:24So I don't want to contradict that. But if you're willing to modify the rules, which is something that I encourage, and we have that in the instructions, house rules, feel free to modify the rules. But I sent you guys the video of my friend's four-year-old after she played, which was like this. It was such an amazing video. And this is the first thing I've ever done that can include families and kids, right? Directly. where it's like four-year-old, 10-year-old is not going to have any interest or necessarily the capacity to read one of my phone books that are like 600 pages long. It's not going to happen.

1:34:00So this is also so much fun to finally now that it's kind of released into the wild to start seeing these things bubbling up that I hoped would be there. It's the reason you make a game, right? You want to share an experience that then the recipients get to share with those people that they love. That's why you make a game. That's exactly what we made here. Yeah. So let's talk about the selling process a little bit more because you said, right? There's the game development, there's building the game, there's crafting the game. Yeah. But there is an equally important part, which is how do you get this thing into people's hands?

1:34:35And for that, you need distribution. So could you, this is going to be a callback. Remember that line review, the very beginning, then I took us on a very meandering path, but There was a point to it. How do you pitch big retailers? How does that happen? And how did you do it in the beginning of Exploding Kittens? I know it's changed over time as you've built your track record, but nonetheless, you still need to do it. And actually, here's a data point that most people will never hear anyone talk about. What percentage of your sales are offline retail versus online? All right, we'll start there.

1:35:13Yeah, we never share these numbers, but for you, Tim, here we go. 70 % of our sales are in-person retail. Only 30 % are online sales. Totally backwards than what you'd expect for almost any industry. But yeah, people like to walk into a store. They like to see and touch and feel the game and flip it over and read the back and compare it to the other games. And that's where we sell our games, which means not only do I need tremendous retail buy-in, those sales meetings are so important, those line reviews, but also the game has to sell itself on the shelf, right? When you're walking down that games aisle, 70 % of our audience does this.

1:35:56You need to look at all the games, hundreds of games, and you need to stop dead in your tracks on this one. And you needed to say, ooh, what's that? And that starts at that line review, starts with getting them to say, not only are we going to commit to this game, but we're going to put it in multiple locations. So you see it more than once, right? Very important. Also, we work with them to figure out the color scheme. And you and I, we did tons of surveys on the color scheme and the character and everything to stop people in their tracks. So just a quick sidebar. I keep doing this, but some of you may remember, and for those who never heard it, I'll just tell you for my very first book, four hour work week, I used Google AdWords to test the top, let's just call it 10 title and subtitle contenders, right?

1:36:44So I bid on keywords that were related to the subject matter in the book. And then the sponsored results, the ads were automatically split tested, like multivariate tested by Google. They will do this automatically. And then all of the URLs, I had different URLs for each title option. They just took people to an under construction page because I didn't care about conversion. I cared about interest, sufficient interest to click. And that is how I figured out the title. And then for the cover, back in the day, I went to Borders, which was on University of Palo Alto. And I had a counter like you might see from a bouncer at the front of a club.

1:37:29And I put different covers onto a book of the same dimensions on the shelf. Oh, wow. I guess I didn't tell you this. Under the new nonfiction. Oh my God. And I just, during the peak hours over a couple of days, I just tracked the number of times it got picked up. Oh, that's so good. And then I used that to determine which cover to use. I love this. And now there are better or certainly easier tools to use. So we ended up, there are a number of them. I'll just mention a few. So we used PickFu, P-I-C-K-F-U.com. There's also Intellivy, I-N-T-E-L-L-I-V-Y. And then there's another one called Sticky Beak also.

1:38:11But these allow you to do roughly the same thing, which is you can take, for instance, with this box design or any type of art, or you could probably do it with copy, many different things. You can survey people who fit a particular demographic. You could identify whatever the age is, the gender, if they are members of a particular service, whether they have prime membership or this membership or that membership, You can fine slice it however you want, and then you can serve up variants, right? So for this coyote who you see on the cover, I'll explain to people. Basically, the box looks like a slightly enlarged box for a deck of cards.

1:38:58And then the top of the box is this beautiful autumnal orange, almost a saffron, like Buddhist robe. We spent so much time on these colors. We spent so much time on this. It is impossible to overstate how much time I spent on this and everybody spent on it. Then there's this beautiful lime green. I remember taking photographs of particular leaves at particular times of the year with light coming through it to identify the hexadecimal or Pantone numbers for this particular green. Oh, I remember this as well. You remember. And then looking at color theory and the color wheel and oh my God, it went on and on.

1:39:40But above the coyote, which is in the center of the box, there is this upper portion of a cartoon coyote's head. And very much trickster. Where it ended up is there's a little hat on the coyote, there's an earring, there's a wink, and the snout is where it's cut off. So you don't see the nose. And this was originally, I remember sketching this initially on a Zoom call by pen and paper and then holding it up to the Zoom call to the camera and then later sending the scan and then we worked from there. But we had variants with no hat. We had variants with no earring. We had variants with both eyes open looking to camera, so to speak.

1:40:23We had both eyes open looking in one direction, like off to the side. and we were able to very quickly get a very good statistical signal on what people preferred. Yes. However. However. To your credit, when you showed me that character, initially, both the coyote's eyes were open and we had some questions about the hat. And I remember asking you all these questions. What do you think of a wink? What do you think of an earring? What do you think of a hat? What do you think of one eye closed? Both eyes closed. What do you think? What do you think? And to your credit, your answer was always, let's test it.

1:40:56Like, I don't want to have an opinion about this. I do have an opinion, but I don't even want to tell you. Let's test it. And that is such an intelligent way to approach this. And ultimately, this beautiful character that we ended up with was so clearly the winner. Like, it wasn't even close. Yeah, wasn't even close. And so we were able to get this very strong signal from thousands of people voting. And boom, here we are. Okay, so we were talking about the sort of road to retail. So it's 70 % of your sales are in-person retail versus online. And therefore, the stakes are high for these line review.

1:41:38Yeah. Yeah. Line reviews are a big deal. And I remember we really wanted to all show up in person. I remember you were trying so hard. Our first line review was with Walmart in Bentonville, Arkansas. I remember you wanted so badly to be there. And there was some scheduling conflict that just wasn't going to let it happen. And we tried to change the date. But again, they've got so many meetings and you got to get in at exactly this time. And they couldn't change it to anything appropriate. And I remember thinking like, oh, we're sunk. I don't know how to sell this game without Tim there in the room showing how much passion he has.

1:42:11And you had a great solve. You just recorded a video of all that passion. And you sat down in front of the camera and you just riffed on the game. You were just like, here's why I love this. Here's why this is important to me. Here's why I made this game. first time I put my name on a thing. And you recorded this beautiful, impassioned video. And I remember walking in to the Leiden Review and sitting down and saying, I have a new game. First thing I'm going to do is we're going to play this game. And I'm not going to tell you anything about it. We're just going to play this game. And I set up the game.

1:42:44And within five minutes, they're laughing and they're having this incredible time. And they're like, oh, this is amazing. This is so much fun. How are you going to sell this thing. And I said, I'm going to play a video for you now. And that was it. It was that one-two punch. It was like, we've nailed game design and we've nailed the pitch. We know exactly who to talk to and how to talk to them. And they saw those two elements and they're like, full line purchase. Every single store is getting this game. Yeah. Wild. I mean, that has never happened on an initial pitch for us, ever. Normally, we get into a subset of stores, and then eventually it rolls out to all the stores.

1:43:26This was the first time ever they said, whatever it takes, we need this game everywhere. Which is, I mean, still very surreal for me, and I'm so grateful, obviously. And it's terrifying at the same time. Not going to lie. This is Mr. Dip the toe, then one foot, than weight up to the ankles. This is just Yeah, fire hose on. Full Monty from second zero. What are other keys to pitching in a line review? And that could also be, I'll just offer another option, which is what are some common mistakes that people make or that you suspect people make? So the first most common mistake. Because this could be for games, but it could be for cosmetics.

1:44:10It could be for anything. For anything. The first question is, how are you represented in that room? Remember I said they only take a certain number of meetings. It took us like five years to get one of those meetings. Wow. Even with the thunderous, crazy lightning in a bottle success of Exploding Kids. They only have so many hours. Yeah. Yeah. So what you have to do instead is you find someone who already has a meeting and you hire them as your publisher, and then they represent your game in their meeting. That's how most companies do it. And that's how we did it for years. So the first problem is you have to make sure that whoever is representing you, assuming you can't be in the room, because 99.9 % of the people can't, they are representing you the right way with enough attention.

1:44:53They're pitching it the right way. They're representing it the right way. They're saying the right words. They're conveying the right fun. How do you ensure that? It's a personal relationship. And it's just hard. It's really hard. And to be honest, I don't want to name names, but we went through like three different publishers, and I wasn't happy with how any of them. How did you, this may not be something you can talk about, but how did you craft the deal structure such that you could take a swing? And then you're like, okay, swing and a miss, we're going to go to someone else. And then swing and a miss, we're going to go to someone else.

1:45:23Yeah. How are those deals structured? We got very lucky. Because our Kickstarter campaign was so through the roof, that fed into our Amazon sales immediately. And so I could go from publisher to publisher saying, okay. look how many games I sold last week. Look how many I sold the week before that. This is a prestigious title that you want to represent. And then when they wouldn't represent me properly, wouldn't get the right sales, couldn't get the right deal structure in place, because we also demand quite a bit as far as where the game is placed. Is it in aisle? Is it out of aisle? Meaning, is it in the game section or somewhere else?

1:46:00Ankle height versus eye height. Exactly right. Those bottom shelves are like a death sentence, right? Nobody looks down there. Can we get games at checkout, like where they're selling chewing gum? Can we put games there? Can we get games in the catalog? All this stuff that I wanted for our games was just not being properly represented for us. So eventually, after our sales got high enough, I finally was able to stop doing that silly dance with these publishers, and we were able to publish our own games. quick question so if i'm hearing you correctly the success of the direct consumer right the dtc kickstarter amazon or i should say online those successes allowed you to dictate certain deal terms with the publishers that flexibility and they allow us to say you want to represent us even then they only have a one maybe two hour meeting and there's only so many games they can pitch, right?

1:46:55So how do they fill that library? And then you get to the point where you can go and book those meetings yourself. How important was having a critical mass of SKUs? Because I have to imagine if I'm a major retailer, I don't want to have a meeting with someone who only has one thing to sell. That's why we couldn't do it at first. It was only once we had, I think, 10 games was the magic number to make it worth their while. Okay, got it. Yeah. And that takes a long time, right? And it's not just 10 games. It's 10 bestsellers. And unless you're there, they're just like, yeah, just go through a publisher.

1:47:27We don't have time for it. We take 10 meetings. We don't have time for an 11th. All right. So what have you learned understanding, but to the extent possible, if we can put aside the element of Exploding Kittens having and developing this incredible track record, which allows you to not cut corners in a bad way, but you can go in without a finished prototype of the box, et cetera. Right. If we put that aside for the moment, what have you learned about line reviews? If you look at your first outing versus the more refined line reviews. And I'm spending a lot of time on this, guys, because this applies to everything.

1:48:07It applies to so much. You have a movie? Okay, fine. How are people going to see the movie? Yeah, you can go direct, but you might want a distribution partner. or like what we're talking about will apply to that pitch meeting. A lot of it. And it's sort of the stuff that mainstream magic is made of is figuring out how to craft these meetings. Yeah. Remember you said, like it or not, you're in sales. Here it is. This is where the rubber meets the road. Like dust off your tap dancing shoes because holy crap, these are tough. So you have to walk into that meeting and first you have to keep in mind, you are their 10th meeting.

1:48:44Even if you're not their 10th meeting, you're their 10th meeting, right? Like they're in this like, I'm tired. I want to get out of this room. I've been at this for too long. Like they're in that mindset. So the first thing you got to do is get them out of that funk. You need them to understand that this is going to be the best of the 10 meetings. And you do that with enthusiasm. You do that with props. You do that with a cool video, right? Like the stuff that can get them out of, oh, this isn't like the other meetings. Cool. That's where you start. We show up with two of those suitcases, not the little carry-on ones, like the giant, crazy roller bag suitcases, and they're filled with products.

1:49:23So we fill those two suitcases with games, like the most beautiful games we've got, even stuff that we're not pitching that day, even stuff we know will never see the light of day because we're going to set all of those up. And the basic premise is buy into this world. Exploding Kittens is not a product. It's a whole world. And you can have this world on your store shelves. And so that's how we start. And that's a really nice way to start. Okay. Then what they're expecting is, okay, pitch us a game one at a time. Pitch this. Okay, you're done. Okay. Pitch the next one. Okay, you're done. Pitch the next one.

1:50:00So what we do is very different. Instead of pitching a game and then pitching the next one, Just like I said for Coyote, we're like, hey, we're going to play a game. And usually they say, we don't have time to play. Can you just pitch it? And I say, no, we're going to play a game. Confrontation. I get it. But I force them to play the games. Every single one of them. Now, I'm not going to play all the way through. I'm not going to spend 10 or 20 minutes. All right. This might seem like a trivial detail, but I don't think it is. You in a tuxedo on a top hat for this? Are you dressed in your Sunday's finest?

1:50:31Yeah. Oh, it's so funny. So I learned this in my Microsoft days. If I dress up, if I wear a tuxedo, if I wear a suit, if I even wear a button-up shirt, nobody takes me seriously. Because I'm supposed to be the creative guy, right? I have to wear the creative guy uniform. I have to wear a t-shirt. I have to wear jeans. Otherwise, no one looks at me. So that's how I show up. Luckily, it's a really comfortable uniform for me. So I force them to play. And I'm there being the game's biggest cheerleader, I don't usually let them win, but I usually orchestrate a scenario in the game where they're having as much fun as possible.

1:51:10And my goal is for them to have exactly those emotions that we talked about. When we start, I need them to think, I can do that. And then a minute in, I need them to think, oh, I did that. What's next? Oh, I can do that next thing too. And I'm just crafting that. And right at the point where they're like, oh, I know what the next thing is. I pull the game away. We're done playing. Now let me tell you how we're going to sell this game. And it's because at that point they're drooling. And I do that 10 times in a meeting and we just keep hitting that over and over. And I am very aware that the last two games I pitch are usually not going to be purchased because they're exhausted.

1:51:45Because that roller coaster, they've been up and down too many times. So you're going to have to figure out the sequence. Yes. Do you start with the game you hope is going to be the big purchase or how do you sequence it. Yeah. We open with our shortest, easiest pitch. And what that usually is, is an Exploding Kittens expansion. So if I need to sell an expansion box or a new Exploding Kittens product, and I know I don't have to work very hard to sell it because they always sell, that'll take the first spot. That just warms the waters, gets us all eased in. A little yes momentum. Exactly. Doesn't hurt.

1:52:18Yeah. The number two spot is the glory spot. Whoever's there, that's the game I'm actually pitching today. That's where Coyote was, right? That's the big thing we're going to talk about. And then the next five are equal. It doesn't matter what order they are. Usually we'll sell all five of those at a typical meeting, all five. What happens after that is very iffy. Now, you mentioned you play the game, you get them super excited, hopefully the drilling over it. And then you say, all right, I'm going to take the game away. Here's how we're going to sell it. what is included in the, here's how we're going to sell it.

1:52:54Yeah. Okay. So important. So this has changed over the last three years. It used to be, I have to start with the box and we still, I shouldn't say it used to be, it still is. We start with the box. Look how beautiful this thing is. Here's, and we do a mock-up. Here's how it looks on the shelf. And it's usually from a photograph we took like that morning. Like we want to show you, Hey target, here's what your shelf looks like. Hey Walmart, here's what your shelf looks like. Here is our game right there in line. And I should mention, this probably goes without saying, but you were not just showing up and winging it.

1:53:23I mean, you guys - Oh my God. ...reherse like you're going to be performing once in a lifetime at Carnegie Hall. It is, if we screw up this meeting, our company is screwed. We don't survive a bad meeting. Yeah. So yeah, there is nothing that matters more than this. This is arguably 70 % of our business this year, if we mess up this meeting, we will see a 70 % drop. If they bought zero games, I don't know that our company would survive that. So it's a big deal. We rehearse constantly. We make changes constantly. We make all these props. We try to get the spot either right after breakfast or right after lunch because that's when they're in the best moods.

1:54:04All of it is orchestrated and so carefully. Every single thing is orchestrated. Who's in the meeting? How many chairs are we going to fill? How do you request those time slots? Because I imagine you're not the only people who are thinking about this, right? It makes me think of the data. It's like a kind of meta analysis long ago, looking at judges' verdicts before or after meals and leniency, right? Yeah, right. So how do you get the right slots? Yeah. Yeah. So how do you angle for those? There's an art to that as well. So we have agents. We have representatives, one for Target and one for Walmart.

1:54:42And these are people who live in those cities and they live and breathe sales with the sales rep. So their job, the very kind of cynical way to say it is they're like lobbyists, right? But the more ambassadors, there we go. That's a much more appropriate way. They have been doing the job for longer than the salespeople have, longer than the buyers have. And as a result, the relationship that they have with the buyers is actually one of education, right? Because they've seen all the mistakes. They know where all the landmines are. They know how to avoid them. And so part of the art of getting the best meetings, of getting yourself set up the best is to hire the best agent.

1:55:25How does someone find said agents? Friends of friends of friends. Yeah. The best ones already have too many clients, right? You can't work with them. The usual situation. Yeah, exactly. But if you have a good enough brand, if you have the right relationships, if you can talk to the right people, and if you're persistent, you can get the right agents. I actually thought we didn't need an agent at all at first. I was like, we can just do, we're going to show up the day before, we're going to walk into these meetings. And some very good friends of mine in the industry said, you're an idiot. It's not going to work.

1:55:57So we started working with agents and they are incredible. I mean, they know the industry. Just to dig into that a little, why wouldn't that work? Is it that the code of etiquette and the way everything has been set up involves those agents and therefore it wouldn't work? Or are there other reasons why going in guns blazing without representation wouldn't work? The answer is both. So the buyers are much less likely to take you seriously unless you have an agent in the room. And part of that is just because - I guess part of it is just like, these fools don't know how this is done. Exactly right.

1:56:28Right. They're showing up to Downton Abbey wearing a tank top. Exactly right. And they don't know how to use the silverware. Exactly. Why should I trust their ability to be a good partner and actually get things done on time if they haven't done their homework? Precisely. And the other half is you haven't done your homework. Yeah. Like you actually don't know. You actually don't know how to use the silverware, right? When we walk into a meeting, the agent has done a year's worth of work prepping for that meeting. They've made sure the buyers know what you're going to pitch, how many games you're going to pitch, what the order of the games is.

1:56:58They've made sure that you know the sales for the previous purchases they've made going into the meeting. So they already have the confidence in like, yes, these people are going to deliver. They've made sure that inventory levels are where they need to be so that a meeting doesn't get sidetracked by them saying, this game is sold out. How did you let that happen? So many things can go wrong that the agent is fixing before they go wrong so that the meeting stays on the rails and gets you to success. It's a full-time job. And so that agent is the person who lobbies for the appointment after breakfast or lunch.

1:57:33But you have to know to ask for it, right? Because your agent has other clients, right? They're going to sit through maybe three, sometimes four meetings in that sell cycle. And they're going to give that prime slot to the one who asks for it. So you've got to know to ask for it. Here I am telling you on this podcast, it's probably going to make my job a little bit harder for the next sales round, but so be it. Yeah. I mean, people listening need to hop through a few hoops before they end up being viable competition. Yeah, yeah, yeah. All right. There's a few other tricks. And we are going to come back to, if you're just developing a game at your kitchen table, what are some of the first steps?

1:58:13So we're going to get to that. Yeah, for sure. But in the meantime, you said a couple of tricks of the trade? There's a few more. I should be a little careful about what I say, but look - We can always bleep things out at it later. So you want to pay attention to, believe it or not, all of the retailers have color themes year by year. So you want to make sure that when you walk into a meeting, your boxes match that color scheme. It makes it much easier for them to say yes. Had no idea. Yeah, right. I know. Because why would you? Because why would anybody? Right? There's things like those agents are given permission to read the notes from the all hands meeting from the company.

1:58:51So they know what the company's priorities are. And so you want to sit down with your agent in advance and say, those buyers, what are they going to get promotions and raises based on this year? Is it more throughput at the store? Is it promote online sales? Is it match the color scheme? Is it whatever it is, you want to make sure. Yeah. And you want to make sure that when they look at your games, they think, I'm really trying to promote online sales this year. Whoa, this game would do great on our website. And then the next game, this game would do great on our website as well. And by the time you get to the end of the meeting, they're like, oh my God, I can get a promotion if I just buy all 10 of these games, right?

1:59:32That's what you want them to walk away with. All right. So these meetings are huge. We've established this. Huge deal. So important. You mentioned a couple of tricks of the trade. Yeah. Any other tips, tricks, learnings along the way? So what happens after those meetings is also very important. There's two things we have to talk about. One is pricing structure, and the other is marketing. So in the meeting, you talk a little bit about both. You have to now include marketing. Remember I said three years ago, things were different than today? Three years ago, the marketing plan that you show for your game is largely your own website.

2:00:07maybe you've bought some TV commercials, things like billboards, product placement here and there, things like that. Today, none of that matters. All they care about is social media because that's the only form of marketing for games that works anymore. I should say also, it particularly works on, it's my understanding, platforms like TikTok or now that other platforms have realized to avoid TikTok consuming their market share, they need to push and reward short form video. That's right. Short form video. Casual games are perfectly suited to short form video. And the way that you build the most effective videos for those is you need to inspire, I think, two emotions.

2:00:52One, I understand what those people are experiencing right now. And two, I would like to experience that. And it took me forever to get to those two sentences, right? At first it was, let's show gameplay. Let's show setup. Let's show a memorable moment. Let's show people screaming and yelling because they're having so much fun. None of that matters. None of that works. That looks like fun. I could have that much fun. that's it. That's what you're trying to show. How does that differ from the first? It's very, very focused, right? Like you want to show, remember we talked about mastery early on.

2:01:29Well, I also asked you guys because we were talking about this very early on in the process, right? Also, because if I'm procrastinating doing something hard, I like to talk about the marketing because it's a lot easier for me to talk about. But I wanted to see examples of videos that had worked for any of your games, right? Social posts. And so they were sent over and I was like, okay, I think I can do this while this works. Often it was like one person playing, the other person kind of like struggling to guess what the other person was doing and one person losing it laughing, right? Yeah. Just inconsolably, but in the best possible way, like losing it, getting the giggles out of control.

2:02:06Yeah. Okay. So I'll tell you one of the most effective pieces of media we have ever used was for Poetry for Neanderthals. This has like, at this point, like, I don't know, tens of millions of views. And all it is, is here's how you play poetry for Neanderthals. I have a secret word on this card. I have to get you to say that word. And I can only speak using single syllable words. That's the whole game. If I mess up, someone sitting next to me has a giant inflatable Neanderthal club and they get to bonk me on the head. All right. So there's our whole game. The best video we've ever seen is someone who's trying to get a person to say the word garage.

2:02:38And we know they're trying to get the person to say the word garage because we put that right on the screen. We show you, here's the secret word. It's garage. and they're just saying, car, go here. Car hole. Car hole. This car hole. Big car hole. And everyone's losing it. And the poor person trying to guess is like, what the fuck's a car hole? Like what? Glove compartment? What are you trying to say? And then they say like vehicle and multiple syllable word. And so they get bonked on the head. Okay. Here's why that video is so effective. It's those two sentences. One is, I see the experience they're having.

2:03:14I get that. And the secondary sort of corollary is, I could do better than that. Is this a video, I think I remember seeing this, where this might have been a separate video, but there's a woman who's the poet, and then there's the guy next to her holding the club. So menacing. The axe is going to drop, and everyone's losing it, including the guy with the back. Right, because you look at that, and you say, I understand the rules immediately. I understand the experience they're having. I would like to have that experience. And that's what makes for an effective social media video. All right. So how do you pitch that?

2:03:49Well, we show a lot of examples and we show track record. We say, look, here's how many views our last round of videos got. Here's how many likes, here's how many shares, here's how many subscriptions, like all the stuff. We show them right there in the meeting. We never had to do that. Like this is a brand new phenomenon. And we say, here's the type of video that we're going to craft for this new game. And we always couch it in those two sentences. Here's how we're going to explain the fun people are having. And here's how we're going to make the audience feel like they would like to have that much fun as well.

2:04:21And that's been very effective for us. So that's now half the meeting, right? Because every game we start by, I demo the game. Social media strategy. Yes. I demo the game. I pull the game back. We talk a little bit about the pricing structure and the theme and the box and all that. And then we go right into social media strategy for that game. because I have to spend as much time on that as I did on the game design because they are equally important now. It's huge. Such a difference. All right. So for somebody listening who is thinking about making a game, and I really encourage everyone to do that, and I'm just going to flash.

2:04:55This is as good a time as any just to flash these blank cards that are within every Coyote box. And they are color-coded. You can use these to make action cards, which are these different gestures and actions. Those are the templates that we use. These are the templates. You can use them to make coyote cards, these modifiers. You can use them to make the attack cards, which you use to sabotage other people. There are other ways to play those cards. This is intended to invite everyone to basically create their own game by modifying the rules. That's right. Or adding new elements that are uniquely their own.

2:05:31You can have fun with your friends. You can have fun with your kids. I mean, this is intended to make you a part of the creative process, which you will be part of anyway, just by the way you play the game. But this takes it to another level. And this was a really important element for me. So this will be a warmup in a sense. You get to try game design, game development light with these blank cards. But let's say somebody then decides they want to give it a go. Maybe it's with one of their kids, like you did with your daughter. Maybe Maybe it's by themselves. Who knows? Maybe it's going to the game shop, local game shop, which I really recommend people do.

2:06:09If you've never been to a real proper game shop, go in on a game night when people are set up. And also check out the games you might not be inclined to check out. So if you're a casual gamer, go to a Warhammer night. See what that's about. Totally. Check out these different worlds. You know, another secret weapon is go to a game shop, find the owner or even the person behind the counter. Like someone who knows what they're talking about and just say, I'm looking for a game. What game do you wish more people would give a try? And you will find the gems that way. Because they know. But maybe the game doesn't have the best box or the best name or something.

2:06:47It fell short somewhere and people just aren't buying it. But they know it's amazing. That's where you find them. Yeah. It's a great experience. So start testing the waters in that way. It's so easy to do. In a place like Austin. I mean, this is Austin. People might think of game locations and X, Y, Z. They're all over the place. There happens to be a really vibrant scene here. And if one wanted to start developing their own game, let's say they find something that starts to stick. Yeah. Right? Okay. Okay. We've got a tiger by the tail. This seems to be working. They're playtesting it. It might take a while.

2:07:25Like Settlers of Catan, I think. Klaus Teuber had like 150 versions. before really like that's a that's a complex game yeah but let's say they start to develop the game and they're like all right i would like to try to sell this yeah what are the options yeah what would you say to someone who's like they're smart yeah they can plan yeah like they've operated in the world before right so they're not new to adulting yeah but they have no experience in selling games there are three paths i'll tell you all three paths and i'll tell you my favorite one all right Okay. Path number one, self-publishing.

2:08:03Self-publishing is hard, but you can print out your own decks. You can design everything yourself. You can write the rules yourself. You can do absolutely everything yourself. And then you can spend a few thousand dollars, publish a few hundred copies and send them out to all your friends. Okay. So that's option one. It sucks. Don't do that one. It's just the worst. I mean, you're just going to make every mistake and - You're going to have to pay for your mistakes. And you pay for every mistake, right? And then once you make the mistake, now you can't take it back and you can't undo it. Just don't self-publish.

2:08:35It's a terrible idea. Okay, there's number one. That's not my favorite one. Number two is you go to an existing publisher, Hasbro, Mattel, nowadays Exploding Kittens, right? Like you can approach big publishers, pitch your game, and then strike a deal with them where they will handle all the risk, but they will also take most of the reward, okay? You can still, honestly, get very rich this way, but you have to get into their portfolio. So either you need a track record, or you just have to absolutely wow them, or you have to show up with some bona fides. You can't just say, I'm a brand new designer, here's my brand new game, please publish me.

2:09:14How would you, maybe there are exceptions where people have wowed them, first time game designer with a game. How does one do that? You go to a convention. You go to a convention. Yeah, you go to a convention, you demo your game. they will all show up. They're like agents recruiting for a sports team, right? They're going to show up to all of those places and they're going to walk the halls and they're going to check even the smallest booths. And they're going to even go to the big convention halls where everyone just has their own little folding table or even a temporary folding table, right?

2:09:44Like they're going to look at all of that stuff. So it is possible to do it that way. But you have to keep in mind, they have very few slots open and they usually only have one or two agents, scouts looking for games. So your chances of success there are low as a first-time person. Much better if you can schedule a meeting and they will take that meeting. And then you can say, here's why you should not say no to this. What are the things you can do or put in a pitch that increase the likelihood of getting a meeting outside of being an influencer of 20 million followers on Instagram? Well, yeah, that helps, right?

2:10:18But the reason that helps is what I was going to say is the ability to sell the game, whatever it is. Maybe it's your - By the way, also true of nonfiction writing. Exactly right. If you're selling a book. And for selling a screenplay. And for really selling anything, you need to be able to say, here's why people are going to take notice of this thing and why you would be a fool to pass on this opportunity. That's hard. Oftentimes, the best way to do that is to have already done it, which means your first time out, you need what I'm about to talk about, which is option three. All right. Option three, crowdfunding.

2:10:49This is relatively new, right? Like 10, 15 years old. So it is, I guess, self-publishing in a sense, but you're getting other people to fund the development. Two things. Yes to that. Exactly right. Other people are funding 100 % of the development, which is incredible. But also, you are collecting those funds on a platform that promotes the game, right? People are there watching your video. You're trying to convince them. It is a discovery platform. Exactly. Perfectly phrased. It is a discovery platform. That was missing 15 years ago. I mean, watch my self-published YouTube video and hopefully fund my game.

2:11:24It just didn't exist. So now people are looking at crowdfunding sites, looking for cool new experiences and backing them. And that's a new invention. And that's really cool. And it's not my favorite one either. So I just said I'd pick my favorite and I just pitched three and I said none of them are my favorite. Here's my actual favorite. A combination of two and three. Start on crowdfunding, especially if it's your first time out. Learn everything you can. Your first project's probably going to fail. That's okay. You got nothing to say. You didn't lose anything. Fix it. Relaunch it. Fix it again.

2:11:58Relaunch it again. Take as many times as you need. There's nothing at risk here. You're just learning the process. Awesome. When you get a success on whatever crowdfunding platform you love, now go to those publishers and say, here are my bona fides. here's proof that this thing is going to sell. I've already sold this once. I've already gotten 10 ,000 batteries. Do you do that before you have shipped the game? No. Very important. No. Ship the game first. If the only thing you can prove is that you are a train wreck waiting to happen, you will get nothing from them. So ship the game. Show that you're organized.

2:12:36Even if it's a small fulfillment, like you sell 100 copies of your game, show that you can fulfill those 100 copies and then start to show the reactions to those. if you've only got 100 people who bought the game, reach out to every single one of them and beg them to record a video about how much they love your game. And now go to publishers with that. That's really what you're searching for. Use crowdfunding as exactly what it is, as a way to launch your new game to then take to step two. Let me ask this. There may be people listening or watching who think to themselves, That sounds awesome. But wasn't the heyday of crowdfunding three, four, five years ago?

2:13:16Yes. You hear less about it. Yeah. Certainly for, let's say, selling to 100 people or maybe many, many more. I'm sure there are runaway success campaigns even today. But are there any tweaks that you would add to it? It's really tricky. Okay, so here's what happened with crowdfunding. We launched on Kickstarter. Exploding Kittens launched on Kickstarter. And by some amazing twist of fate, that was perfect timing. Very few people had heard of Kickstarter. They heard about this funny, silly thing. It was drawn by the oatmeal. Matt already had this incredibly large audience. And people showed up and they said, ooh, crowdfunding.

2:13:52Ooh, this thing costs 20 bucks. I'm going to back this thing. And we had 219 ,000 people try that thing. Amazing, right? Unheard of success. Those people then over the next, let's call it five years, stayed on Kickstarter and they backed other things, other games, other projects, whatever. And what they found was the nature of Kickstarter is such that only about 50 % of those projects shipped. Either the thing that shipped was nowhere close to the thing promised, or the thing never shipped and they never got their money back. Whatever it is. People got burned. They got burned and they had a terrible experience.

2:14:29And now when you say, hey, back my Kickstarter, everyone's got this memory implanted of, oh, that was a bad experience for me. Maybe I even had some great experiences, but I also had those bad ones and this is not worth it. And I'm not going back to that site or any crowdfunding site. So that's the problem. We're not seeing the numbers we used to see because everyone's walking in with this baggage and it sucks. My only advice is there is now a secondary ecosystem around Kickstarter. Other websites that have gotten very good at promoting projects, that have gotten very good at advertising new offerings on Kickstarter, and building trust.

2:15:08If you get on this other series… So it's like a curated site that vets projects. Exactly right. And here's the thing. Those companies almost always take a percentage of what the maker gets in exchange for helping them with fulfillment, with creation, with everything. So not only are you buying into a trusted ecosystem, but you also know there's multiple parties involved that are going to work very hard to make sure you get that product. What are some of those companies? I'd have to look them up. Okay. Yeah, no problem. All right. We'll put maybe links to a few of them in the show notes. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

2:15:45There's a ton of them. They all have like the word backer in them somewhere. Backer found and backer this and backer that. Yeah, I just - Okay, we'll put a couple of links in the show notes. Tim.blog slash podcast, you can find it. And I will also just give a shout out to a friend of mine who at some point you have to meet. Maybe you've met him already. Craig Mod, does that name right now? No, I don't know. Okay. All right, so Craig is gem of a human, amazing writer. Also very technical as a software engineer, software development expert. And he, at one point for his beautiful books that he has bound and crafted in Japan, these are works of art.

2:16:23They're absolutely beautiful. And he created basically a, I don't know if open source is the right term, but he does have the code available on GitHub for anybody who wants it called, I think it's called Craigstarter, which is effectively if you want to host your own crowdfunding campaign and in his opinion, fix some of the bugs that were difficult to contend with, then boom, you can do that. Oh, I love that. And I think he incorporated Shopify and other add-ons, different services could be sort of as modules. I'm sure I'm not using the right terminology, but incorporated into it. So people can also check that out.

2:17:07And I have two interviews with Craig. You should check out both of them. They're absolutely fantastic. Okay. So folks can look at these services as basically a stamp of credibility. They will help not only with the promotion, if you are so vetted, but with the fulfillment, right? Like a third-party legit. That's right. Now, I don't think we're going to see a crowdfunding campaign on the scale of Exploding Kittens these days. Yeah. There are a few exceptions. You just interviewed one of them. In fact, Brandon Sanderson. Exactly. Yeah. So like out of control success. $45 million or whatever it was.

2:17:41It's just - Kickstarter campaign for fantasy books. Bonkers. Unheard of. Yeah. Unheard of. But what I love is that that shows like, this is not even a remotely dead platform. There is success to be had here. You just have to be creative. He started out with a great fan base. He picked an incredible title. The first word of his campaign was, surprise. No one's done that before. What does that mean? And just everything about it. Smart on top of smart on top of smart. I loved it. Loved it. So it's very possible, but it's also very rare. And you have to be smart about it. Well, here's the thing. It's possible.

2:18:16And who cares, right? It may not have the gravitational pull that it had five years ago. Yeah. But if you can't sell anything in a crowdfunding campaign, you are not going to sell any buyer at mass retail. Absolutely. It's not going to happen. Absolutely. And therefore, you save yourself years of banging your head against a brick wall when you're never going to break through. If you get, and this might not sound like good news, but if it's going to fail, you want to fail as quickly as possible. It's great news. As long as you don't take it personally. As long as you say, this product. How many games do you guys screw around with on any level?

2:18:56And how many make the cut? we probably work on 100 games a year and less than 20 make the cut. That's with all of your experience. Yeah. Yeah. That's probably way higher than it should be. Like I'm probably pushing forward games that have no right to be pushed forward. But again, don't take it personally. You say, this game is flawed. And the faster you can figure that out, the faster you can move on to a game that isn't flawed. So if I heard you correctly, then it's crowdfunding. Yeah. you establish some numbers and so on that you can share yeah that show traction sometime game reactions etc then you take all of that to book a meeting at a trade show or a conference or convention with one of these publishers who already has the annual meetings and line reviews exactly right and you make a pitch to do a deal with them that's my favorite path through this What deal terms do you need to pay attention to?

2:19:58So there is one very important number that you're going to get, and it's going to seem like a very low number. But here's how this works. Most publishers are going to throw a number at you like 2%. Royalty rate. Yeah. And you're going to think, wait a second, I was the inventor. I get 80 % and you're offering me 2%. But here's what that number actually means. they, the publisher, are going to take on all the risk. They're going to do all the printing. They're going to do all the relationship management. They're going to do that sales meeting. They're supporting hundreds of people on their staff.

2:20:33They're doing all this stuff that you are not doing. But in exchange for that, that 2 % isn't 2 % of the profit. It's 2 % of the revenue. Yeah. Top line. Exactly. And that is a very important distinction. that makes that 2 % probably closer to like 20%, 30 % once you do all the math. It's the opposite of Hollywood accounting, right? Exactly. It's not some percentage of net income, which is defined in some Byzantine way to fuck you every which way from Sunday. Precisely right. Just to reiterate what you just said, like 2 % is more like 20 plus percent. Yes. That's exactly right. Of profit. Yeah.

2:21:12And you can ask them to break down that math for you. You can say, show me the spreadsheet. Show me what you're spending, what your responsibilities are, what mine are. After all of those numbers are crunched, what is the total amount you're going to spend on this game? Show me your total projections on what's coming in. Show me how much I'm going to make of that. And then you can start comparing those numbers yourself and see, oh, of the money that came in, I'm getting 20 % of it. Even though this number only says 2%, once you crunch that math, this is a pretty decent deal. and you can get higher than 2%, usually not as a first-time developer, but I've seen deals anywhere from like 2 % to 12 % on the super high end.

2:21:51Like you've got to be a rock star because at 12%, now you're at like 50%, right? And that's tough to get to. Like you've got to really pull your weight to get numbers like that. So those are what the deals look like. And then after that, then the whole relationship moves into this, It's like, okay, now what the hell are we actually making? What is the quality of the cards? What are the components in the box? Are you allowed to change rules? Is the deal structure similar to a book publishing contract in the sense that the game developer would get an advance against sales? Sometimes. Sometimes. Yeah, you can negotiate that.

2:22:28I've seen publishers do that or not do that. I will just say for Exploding Kittens, we never do advances. It's fundamentally different also from, say, nonfiction book publishing in the following sense. if you're taking a, let's call it conventional publishing approach, which is very similar to selling the game, right? It's like you have an agent, you've got the editors, let's just say, and the publishers who are the buyers of sorts. The editor might be the category buyer, right? But they have to get the okay from the publisher for signing off on deals. And you'll have your royalty rate, which varies widely, but let's just say somewhere, depending on paperback versus hardcover, up to probably a maximum in conventional deals of 12 to 15 % of cover, which is also, again, of cover.

2:23:20And then there's the advance. The critical difference that I was alluding to is typically when a nonfiction book is sold, you are selling a book proposal, which is a writing sample and a marketing plan. Wow. And if and only if a publisher decides to sign a contract and buy the book, do you get an advance to buy you the time so you can stop doing all these other things to write the full book? Got it. Whereas with the game, the game's got to be ready. It's done. Yeah. Now, let's call it 90 % done, to be fair. And usually when we take on games, we change them significantly just because there's always a better version.

2:24:04and through testing, we discover it. The reason we don't do advances partially is exactly what you're saying. You're already done, right? We're not trying to pull you off of other projects. Yeah, you don't have to stop your nine to five. Exactly, exactly. But the other reason is because I want a partnership. I'm not here to say, you sold us this game, now we're never going to talk again. I want you here every day. I want skin in the game. We're going to all make this better together, which is why we do so few partnerships. Now, when you do partnerships, meaning you're the publisher, or you're paying someone a royalty, how do you typically find those?

2:24:39So for instance, and I imagine a lot of it is you guys canvassing and basically asking the question that you recommended people ask the store owners, which game do you wish people played more often? And then you find something that has the bones of a really good game, but a piece of it is shitting the bed, right? There's something that is broken and you're like, oh, we could fix that broken thing. Or do you take cold submissions? How does that work? We have a submission form on our website. We almost never find anything there. It's hard. It's time consuming to go through all of them. And honestly, it's just not the highest quality.

2:25:17We also go to conventions. We look a little bit around there. Sometimes we find a diamond in the rough. But that's a crowded fish and hole, right? Very crowded. The most effective way are those agents. We talk to those two agents and we say, hey, people approach you all the time wanting you to be their agent, and you have to turn a lot of them down. The ones that you feel terrible about because they're such a good game and they just can't get in the door, send them to us. And that works really well. Yeah, smart. That's super smart. Aside from a crowdfunding campaign, what would actually cut through in a submission?

2:25:51Are there any ingredients outside of here are a bunch of compelling data from a crowdfunding campaign? Yeah. Or, hey, I've designed 100 hit games. Yeah, yeah. Aside from those two. Yeah, right. What other types of lines or elements would cut through the noise? Remember I said that phrase. The way we design games is we don't make games that are entertaining. We make games that make the players entertaining. 90 % of the game pitches I see are attempts to be entertaining games. And I just immediately dismiss them. That looks like that game is working so hard to entertain the players. I don't care.

2:26:26the best games the ones that I pay very careful attention to are when everything you do in the game creates an interaction between two players I'm not interested in a four player game where all four players are playing solitaire like it's just who cares I'm interested in a game where the players are playing the players and I play a card we tweaked a lot in Coyote based on that exactly guiding principle those are the best games those are the ones I love the most those are the ones I want to play over and over again And it could be as simple as you might, I'm saying you, the listener or viewer might remember holding your cards facing you versus having the cards available to the entire table.

2:27:08That's right. Because now we're playing all together. And the card I choose, if I have a blind hand, if I have a deck of cards and I choose a card and then I play it, that is me presenting a game to the players. If I have all my available cards face up on the table and everyone can see what I choose and everyone's hoping I pick that first card and I hover my hand over it and then I move to the second card instead and everyone starts groaning and then I play that second card anyway. Now it's me playing the players. And those are the best games in the world. What are some common Achilles heels for games that have the potential to be great and huge successes?

2:27:48and I'm not going to mention names but we've talked about a couple of games that you've considered buying or publishing and I'm wondering what are some of the common weaknesses where you're like, this is a great game but the reason it didn't work is X or Y or Z. So there's two basic places the games fall apart. One is right off the bat their boxes suck or the name sucks. The number of games out there called the legendary folklore of Gorgonzale, right? Like, I can't remember them. I don't know what they are. Gotta throw a cockpunch in there and then it's problem solved.

2:28:40I would... Cockpunch aside, I would argue that those games, they have no chance of success. Yes, they're going to sell 10 copies to the 10 people that bought the legendary Tales of Gorgonzole Volumes 1 through 6, and they're going to buy Volumes 7. Cool, great. I don't care. Picking the wrong name, picking a nondescriptive name, putting a picture on the box that does not describe gameplay at all, and does not provide a compelling narrative about what experience you are about to have, those games have zero chance of success. And I see that over and over and over again. So you can fail right up front.

2:29:16And I've even seen the biggest publishers in the world mess this up. Especially now that game shelves are so crowded. You don't have five games to choose from. You have 500 games to choose from. And a game that doesn't do a good job of saying, pick me, pick me, pick me, you're just not going to pick. So you will fail right there. A really complicated packaging too. I've seen that a bunch. But there's just so much going on. There's no one dominant element. It's like, what am I supposed to look at here? Yeah. What do you look at first? So you can't. Yeah. You don't look at anything. You look at the next box.

2:29:46It's just noise. Yeah, just noise. So we worked very hard on Coyote on all our games, but I remember having this discussion about Coyote because this is such an important lesson. When you look at this box, we know the first thing you're going to look at, and we know the second thing you're going to look at, and we know the third thing you're going to look at. And this is a formula, and we crafted this. It's a formula. Very carefully. By the way, also, exactly what works in old-school print advertising. Yes. Right? Yes. Header image, headline, subheading. Exactly right. Text. And those components are all present here.

2:30:23And if you fuck up the order, pardon my French, the eye doesn't know how to track or it bounces around. Yeah. And if there's other better options right next door, off you go. So we hit those three things on a box meticulously. And your reaction should not be, I'm going to buy that game. That's not our goal. Your reaction is, I'm going to pick up this game and I'm going to turn it over. Now I'm going to read the back of the box. And now we've got a very different task. Now we have more real estate. We still know the first thing you're going to look at. Now we care a little bit less about the second thing.

2:31:00As long as you've already got enough interest, right? You've already committed to picking this thing up. You're willing to read a little story. As long as you can see the end of that story and you know it's not too long, you're going to read a little story. The goal of this is now purchase. I want you to get to the end of this. experience and say, I got to have it. I want this. And just for people who can't see this particular visual, and there's all sorts of stuff on the back of the card, which we won't get into, but some people might notice interesting things on the back of the cards. The dominant element on the back of the box is how to play.

2:31:35And man, we worked on this a lot too, with basically three pains. Step one, step two, step three. Put cards on the table, then take turns performing them. That's step one. And you got a little visual with the salamander action cards. Then next part is play cards to help or sabotage other players. Shows two examples. Sabotage was a very carefully chosen word, by the way. Very carefully chosen. And then the last one is mess up and you're out. The last player standing wins. That's for competitive mode. Now, one aspect of this that I think is very clever is not sure if you should buy this game, question mark.

2:32:08Give us a few seconds to convince you. And then there's a QR code. Nobody does that. Yeah. This is new. I know. Yeah. So what's the impetus behind this? So this was an idea I had that we're demoing on this game. First time ever. My idea was, if I went to the store with you, I could convince you to buy my favorite game. Yeah. Because I'm going to pitch the hell out of that game. But I'm not in the store with you. So that's a problem. So my first idea was, for every retail location in the world, will they let us install a telephone that you can pick up and talk to somebody? And they said, no. My second idea was, can I hire a person to stand in every store and convince you to buy the game I want you to buy?

2:32:53And they said, sort of, but you have to pay for all of that. And I was like, oh, that's not going to work. And so this was option three. That's a lot of people. Yeah. 6 ,000 plus people. This is, I know, right? Can you imagine? So this is just a little QR code. And the idea is, I can't stand next to you for every store. but I can tell you what I would have said had I been standing there. And so you scan this code and it's just a 15 second video. In this case, it's me, Tim, saying, listen, you're holding a game in your hands. It's the greatest thing you'll ever see. Let me try to convince you. And it's just a pitch.

2:33:28It's just, if I were standing next to you in the store, here's why you should buy this game. And I don't think a lot of people are going to scan that code, to be fair. But for those who do, they're going to have the experience of a friend telling them, trust me, this is going to be great. Trust me. Yeah. And it doesn't take up that much real estate either. It's an easy addition to the box. So once again, test it. Yeah. Right? Test it. What's the worst that can happen? See what happens. Yeah. And I also want to revisit something you mentioned earlier, which is that royalty rate. Yeah. Whether it's 2%, up to 12 % in the book world.

2:34:03Let me take the book world and the publishing world in the book publishing sense is changing a lot, but it's also quite consistent over time. Different things have changed. Sure, audio as a format has grown tremendously and become highly prized now versus 10 years ago. When I could carve out those rights, it's a lot harder to do now if you're going to do the conventional route. But some folks will look at the percentages and they'll say, well, wait a second. Max 15 % after an escalator, I'm starting off at 12 % for hardcover. That's ridiculous, right? I wrote the whole thing. I want to make the lion's share.

2:34:43There are some instances where you can make that work. But I will say just a few things. When you begin, for most people, unless you are excellent at running a meticulously managed business, it's actually pretty tough to beat those numbers. in part because you're going to be sacrificing distribution. So the top of the funnel number is going to be different. Secondly, when you factor in paying various agents, various distributors, and all of these little costs that for you without any scale of having a thousand SKUs in a department dedicated to it, you start to very quickly approach that number.

2:35:31Very quickly. And by the way, you're running a real business. Yeah. Right? This is not the easiest thing in the world to do at all. And I will probably do some experiments on that side of the equation in terms of self-publishing, which I would put in quotation marks because it's going to be like augmented pseudo self-publishing on a few levels. I would only have the confidence of doing that myself currently because I've gone through the conventional route multiple times. And I've also run quite a few businesses. Yeah. But if you've never, what Stephen Key, I mentioned earlier, one simple idea for licensing, what he might call venturing, running a business, do not underestimate the value of your time and sanity also, right?

2:36:16Because what Stephen would do, he's like, hey, look, I'll take the licensing deal. Maybe he'll negotiate the number up a little bit. But he's like, I can do 12 of those a year. Yeah. That's right. Right? That's exactly. And it adds up to a lot and no employees. Yeah. Yeah. No supply chain issues. No risk. No oops, that was printed the wrong way. Right. And now I have thousands of books. Oh my God. That are sitting in my garage unsold, gathering dust and mold. Let me tell you the simplest example of the difference between doing it yourself and getting help, valuing your time. Our very first game, Exploding Kittens, I needed to put a barcode on the box, right?

2:36:56Because it has to sell in retail. So I go, I'm like, I'm in a research. This can't be too hard. So I do the research and I find this website and it's like, you know, you got to pay some little subscribe, a hundred bucks a year, whatever it is. And you can generate unlimited barcodes. Amazing. So I generate a barcode. I put it on the box. That wasn't so hard. Then Target's like, well, this is the wrong format. Like, okay, I spend another hundred bucks. I get a different format, put it on. I'm like, we need a different barcode based on the palette that it's in. And then I talked to Walmart and they're like, yeah, we use a different barcode format.

2:37:28and we need this barcode to represent whether it was picked up in China or Mexico or Poland. So you actually need three different ones. Oh, and by the way, if it's bundled with other games, we need a fourth one. And by the way, if it ships into Arkansas, we need a fifth. And I was just like, help. Like, oh my God, help. And that's the difference. Like you should not get good at this. Why would you want to get good at that? You know, what's funny is I was actually going to bring up the example of the UPC codes and ISBN and all this stuff. because I also went down that rabbit hole. I'm like, how hard could it be?

2:38:01Right. Oh, this is easy. Right. And lo and behold, actually, it's a lot of brain damage. Yeah. I'm not saying that no one should venture in the sense of self-funding or self-publishing, but it is a lot harder and much more consuming than most people realize. And there's no reason, unless you want to do it for a living, there's no reason to get good at it. Yeah. Like, there's no upside there. And do it for a living, meaning handle those types of details. Right, exactly. Okay. Anyway, we have a barcode person who does it for a living. She's quite good. I'm so happy she's on my team. All right. So on the side of selling games, what else have we not touched on?

2:38:43Any other aspects? Another thing I learned along the way is there's two kinds of selling. One is everything we've been talking about today. Your expectation is I have sold you a game. The game is now your responsibility. And we've negotiated a price. You, the retailer, own this game now, and you're going to sell it. The second kind is the kind that we actually engage in, which is you do own this game, but there are restrictions on how you can sell it. Can you explain that again? So when you say you own this game, you mean a retailer? You, the retailer, have purchased this palette of games from me.

2:39:20I get it. All right, sorry. I was just clarifying because people might have heard that as you own the IP of the game. Sorry, sorry, sorry. Yes. So I were buying an inventory of this game. Correct. Now, what if the game doesn't sell very well? Whose problem is that? Well, if you didn't think that through and it's just a straight sale, they can put it in a bargain bin or they can sell it to somebody else who's then going to sell it. Or if you really didn't negotiate it, they can force you to buy it back from them. the restrictions on what happens to the game, what they're allowed to do post-sale is so meticulous.

2:39:57And these contracts get so long. And this is another thing. You don't want to get good at this. You just need to hire someone who has seen every imaginable mistake and knows what to argue for. And oftentimes the retailers don't care that much about this part, especially because they have a lot of faith. This thing's going to do well, right? But when it goes poorly, if it goes poorly. And we've had a few examples of this. What do you do next? In the case of something as simple as like Amazon, Amazon has a terrible policy for returns. Namely, they will accept all returns and it is the vendor's responsibility, my responsibility.

2:40:33So you buy Exploding Kittens for game night, you play the game, you damage all the cards because you spilled beer all over them. You put them back in the box the next day after you had a great time and you return it. And now that's my cost, right? And that happens hundreds of times a week. It sucks. There's also this thing where people will buy counterfeit games and they'll buy then the real version. So they'll buy a counterfeit for a dollar. They'll buy the real version on Amazon. They'll keep the real version. They'll return the counterfeit. And now that's mine as well. And I just spent$20 on that stupid counterfeit version because that's coming back to me.

2:41:07So all of this stuff has to be thought through in advance. And it's tricky because some retailers, The Targets and the Walmarts of the world, they are so willing to work with you on that stuff. Amazon, not so much. They're just like, oh, you don't like our policy? All right, well, maybe a different platform is for you. So it's hard. It's really hard. And I should say that I've run into when I've talked about termination clauses or what do we do when everyone's pissed off and things aren't working? because really that's the only time that you're going to go back and look at the agreement, which is why Gary Keller, famous for his real estate empire, said you should really call them disagreements.

2:41:48The only time you're going to look at them is when things are really going sideways. And there are some people I've spoken to about the importance of these things. They're like, wow, it's really pessimistic. I'm like, no, no, no. Let's understand the consequences of not going through this. I know so many examples of entrepreneurs who actually had a chance at a runaway success. And they did not pay attention to these terms for, say, a QVC or a huge retailer. And this could happen with Kickstarter as well, of course. They get overextended because now they have orders for God knows how much inventory that is well beyond their capacity, their experience, their financial means.

2:42:32And in their mind, let's take out the Kickstarter or crowdfunding, but they don't think about the return policy and they get the hug of death. They overextend themselves financially to produce the inventory. They ship it and then any number of things can happen. It might be like net 270 payment terms. Yeah. Oh, God. Could be just like cashflow suicide right on the front end. And on top of that, you might get all of it shipped back to you. All of it. And it's your problem. And then that is - It's so tragic. That's the hug of death and you're done. Yeah. You've seen this. I mean, you've seen this picture.

2:43:05you have this friend whose apartment is filled with products and it's taken over their living space and they have no way to move it. I mean, I did that myself early on. I made an audiobook product. I was going to sell millions of this thing. Oh my God, didn't do any market testing, none of that stuff. Just high on my own supply. And I had an entire garage full of these things. They just melted in the heat ultimately. And at the time though, that was a huge financial risk. I mean, I didn't take so much risk that it torpedoed me. But if I had had that level of self-delusion and lack of experimentation a little later on, it very easily could have been a recipe for disaster.

2:43:48There's so many ways to mess this up. There's so many ways to mess it up. The only good news is there is someone out there who has messed it up in every possible way. Yeah. Or represented people who have messed it up in every possible way. And those are the people you have to work with. You have to. And if you don't, the risk you're taking on is just massive. And luckily, I had some very good advice early on from people who said, don't take this on yourself. Don't do this. And it's the best advice I ever got. And I think maybe, tell me if this is overreaching on my part, but don't take this on yourself now.

2:44:26Now, in the sense that after you've had 10 mega successes, and you actually are fluent in retail ease, and you have the relationships, all right, now you can take some calculated risks. And now you can hire the people that you would otherwise contract. Now you can pull them in-house. Because now you can afford their salaries. Now you want them to only be working on your own products. Great. That's a huge mark of success. And really, that is exactly the way you reinvest in your own company. And to reiterate just a few things, if you want to develop a game, number one, you can just develop for your family, your friends, and keep it small.

2:45:07And I will just say in the book world, a lot of later mega successes have started out that way. So you don't have to go for scale, which I think can be a very dangerous word out of the gate. But as you mentioned, you can also, with the blank cards in Coyote, you can get a taste of it, see if you like it. Then you can use the books that you recommended. And there are certainly other resources. We'll put things in the show notes to play around with prototyping. I mean, look at these initial cards. These are blank cards with Sharpie writing. That's it. That's literally it. That's the entire thing.

2:45:43And you can also find kits online. You can find them anywhere you want. Amazon has gaming kits where there are blank dice and cards and so on. So you You can workshop it. It's like build a bear for games, basically. Yeah, that's right. And what I would add to that is you don't need to run a big business to be a successful game designer. In fact, I would imagine most of the legendary game designers are not running companies. They're designing games and licensing them. And man, there are some legends out there. They've created incredible games, and they've generated gigantic wealth for themselves.

2:46:26Because in success, that 2 % deal, that 5 % deal, whatever it is, that faucet doesn't turn off. That's in perpetuity. So yeah. In summary, I don't think the games business is going anywhere. And also, there is a lot of room to innovate. There still is room. I mean, there's so many games, but I wouldn't have even attempted to create a game had I not thought there was space. Yeah. And the thing is, it's like saying, is there still space in the book industry, in the movie industry? All a game is, is an idea delivered in a new way, right? So when are we going to run out of ideas? When are we going to run out of delivery mechanisms?

2:47:12The answer to both of those individually is never. Combine them both together and like, it's just build games forever. You'll always have a new way to deliver it. All right. So I'm trying to think of anything that we missed. I do have a tantalizing offer for listeners and viewers just for fun, because why not? And we will have also mentioned that in the intro. But before I get to that, anything critical that we've forgotten? Is there anything that we have left out or any other resources, people to watch, maybe. People to Google and Wikipedia, maybe. Anything at all. All right. I got two. I got two that are interesting.

2:47:57One is, there is a podcast I quite like for game design. It's called Fun Problems. It's with Peter and AJ. All they do is they talk about game design. Now, they do talk about more hardcore games than I am accustomed to. It's a wide range of topics, but it's fun stuff. It's worth listening to if you want to know more about game design. And the second thing is because of you. Because of you, because of this process, this journey that we've been on over the last few years, I realized that I don't document any of this, ever. I never talk about what goes into a game design. I never talk about where to buy blank cards.

2:48:32And I never talk about why anybody can do this and what the process is like. So I've started recording it. and I've started for the first time. I can't believe I'm saying this. I actually started a YouTube channel and you can actually go and watch these instructional videos. Literally, if you want to make a game, the whole idea is here is how to make a game from scratch. Nobody's watching right now, but... YouTube.com at Elan Lee. That's E-L-A-N-L-E-E. You can also just search him on YouTube. The first result will be our podcast together. Yeah, that's true. Episode one. And then within the first few results, you'll also find it.

2:49:11But I'm pretty sure the URL is youtube.com slash at Elon Lee. And let's finish up with a few things. The first will be the tantalizing offer that I mentioned. So the tantalizing offer is this. There's no purchase required whatsoever. So if any sweet steaks sharks are out there, take it easy. Take it easy. So this is going to be just a fun little, it's not even a competition, just a fun little experiment that I want to run.

2:50:06and maybe some special guests. Here's how. Option number one, simply visit any Target or Walmart and take a fun photo or video with a Coyote game. No purchase necessary. Option number two, if you already bought Coyote, record yourself playing the game with friends or family. That's it. I would love to see it. Then share your photo or video on Instagram or TikTok or both and tag me and Exploding Kittens. You can find us easily, but I'm at Tim Ferriss on both. that's at Tim F E R R I S S and exploding kittens is exploding kittens at exploding kittens on TikTok and at game of kittens on Instagram.

2:50:43So share your photo and or video on Instagram and or TikTok, put them everywhere. Why not? And tag both me and exploding kittens. Long-time listeners know that I have love of deadlines. This is how things actually get done. So the deadline to post is August 17. That means that 10 p.m. PST, August 17. By then, you need to have posted and done all this stuff. By August 31st, we'll randomly select five winners from people who post. Each winner will receive round-trip airfare within the U.S., one night at a hotel, and will join us at our secret L.A. mansion party. And I think the legal elves wanted me to mention that that's going to be coach airfare.

2:51:21So just to be super clear, important legal disclaimer, no purchase necessary. open to U.S. residents aged 18 or older. So no little kids, no minotaurs allowed. Void where prohibited. Winners selected at random. Odds depend on number of eligible entries. Travel dates must align with the event. Likely in September, we are still finalizing the time with the busiest man in show business, Elon Lee himself. For official rules, eligibility details, and final date, please visit tim.blog slash rules. So go ahead, post a creative TikTok or InstaReel or a photo with Coyote by August 17th, 10 p.m. PST. Tag us and you might just be celebrating with us in Hollywood this fall.

2:52:00Now, back to the episode.

2:52:06And what else? Anything else to add? I have a little bit of one more thing I want to say. Oh, okay. I want to hear one more thing. I just wanted to thank you so much for allowing me to be part of this incredible ride. Oh my goodness. And just collaborating on the game. It's been so meaningful for me and so much fun. and so great to get closer with you and your family. And we've all been traveling together since. I love it. And to work with the incredible team that you have, Exploiting Kittens. I'm not going to mention them all because there are quite a few. But it's just been such a joy and a dream come true to actually have this thing in my mind that was floating around that I've always wanted to do.

2:52:42And now here it is. And people can get it. Tim Ferriss made a game. Yeah. Look, here's the thing. You're so welcome. And thank you. We have limited time here, and you have to choose your endeavors wisely. And this was one of the wisest choices I've ever made. Oh, thanks, man. Yeah. All right. We're going to go get a fantastic meal. It's Texas, so probably a bunch of meat. Barbecue. Who knows? Maybe some tequila, make an appearance unbidden. You don't know. Strange things happen out here in Austin, Texas. And for everybody listening, we will link to all sorts of things, many resources that will help you think about how you might create a game.

2:53:23You can start with the blank cards in Coyote. Those will actually teach you a lot, I think, as you begin to experiment with these different elements. Because you're going to fail. Because your first few are not going to work. And you'll learn why. And then if you run out of blank cards, look, just go get some blank cards. Just go buy a blank deck and you can use those. But this is something anyone can do. You did this with your daughter when she was how old? Four. Four, right? This is an incredibly fun family activity. It's an incredibly fun friend activity. And it gets you off of your screens.

2:53:59It's not good for you folks. So important. They are tools, but there is a point at which the tools become our masters. And that is where a lot of the poison seeps in around the cracks. Yeah. And this thing builds memories. Yeah. That's what you should be doing. and that's what your phone isn't doing. This is building memories. Building memories with some durability, not ephemera that get pushed out of your head as soon as you watch the next 10-second clip. So this is something I've wanted to do for so long and I'm thrilled that it's here. Fingers crossed. I'm still nervous as hell, obviously. But we've done so much playtesting.

2:54:34I mean, hundreds of people have playtested at this point and have made these fine tuning tweaks along the way. So I would love everybody to think about your life as a collection of games. You may not be aware of which games you're playing just yet, but rest assured, in some respects, you are playing games and you get to choose more games than you realize. Most of them are optional. Not all of them. Sure, we have responsibilities as adults and so on, but this is a way to open up that Pandora's box of possibility. And we'll include a lot of resources in the show notes. So tim.blog slash podcast, just search Coyote.

2:55:19That'll probably be the easiest way to find it. C-O-Y-O-T-E. And another time I'll explain the backstory there, which is pretty wild, but for another time. And until next time, as always, be a little kinder than is necessary. Not just to others, also to yourself. Play wisely, find fun problems. And I am going to check out that podcast. and life is short. Have fun while you're here, folks. And until next time, thanks for tuning in. Hey guys, this is Tim again. Just one more thing before you take off and that is Five Bullet Friday. Would you enjoy getting a short email from me every Friday that provides a little fun before the weekend?

2:56:01Between one and a half and two million people subscribe to my free newsletter, my super short newsletter called Five Bullet Friday. Easy to sign up, easy to cancel. It is basically a half page that I send out every Friday to share the coolest things I've found or discovered or have started exploring over that week. It's kind of like my diary of cool things. It often includes articles I'm reading, books I'm reading, albums perhaps, gadgets, gizmos, all sorts of tech tricks and so on that get sent to me by my friends, including a lot of podcast guests. and these strange esoteric things end up in my field and then I test them and then I share them with you.

2:56:39So if that sounds fun, again, it's very short, a little tiny bite of goodness before you head off for the weekend, something to think about. If you'd like to try it out, just go to tim.blog slash Friday, type that into your browser, tim.blog slash Friday, drop in your email and you'll get the very next one. Thanks for listening. Not to be a salty old dog, but then again, that's what I am. But in the early 2000s, back in the day when I was running my own e-commerce business, the tools were atrocious. They tried hard. But man, was it bad. You had to cobble all sorts of stuff together. Huge pain in the ass.

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