hey this is Jamie from Stone Meyer games as you can tell from my t-shirt here this video is going to be a little different because one of the things that I love about the board game industry is that new people discover tabletop games every day like right I don't know how many people exactly but I think people are constantly discovering tabletop games so just really forget that especially if you've been in the industry or the hobby for a long time you're so entrenched in it they may not realize it and I do the same thing but as someone who owns a board game company and who designs games I thought I'd take this this idea that I'm thinking of right now that people are discovering table the tabletop hobby and my company in my games everyday I thought I'd film a video that talks about the history of still meier games so whether or not you are new to the Hobby or you're nudists Ammar games or if you think you know a lot about my company this video might be interesting to you because I'm gonna talk about kind of the evolution of my company over time hopefully I'll do it succinctly I'll kind of go year by year and hopefully you'll you'll learn something new about stone Meyer games so I'll start before 2011 so everything before 2011 I'll wrap up by saying a few different things one is I grew up fortunately in a family that played a lot of tabletop games and so I was playing games from a pretty young age and I also as soon as I got into games from maybe eight or nine years old I I was also interested in designing games so I've been pretty much designing games my whole life mostly as a as a hobby up until my adult life but and I never thought much of anything would come of it but I still really enjoyed doing it for fun as a kid um as I got older I also found a passion for entrepreneurship and so I went to to school I have a degree in international business from Washington University in st. Louis also a minor in Japanese because I thought I was going to do like Japanese international business in Japan something like that but I have a business degree I worked as a waiter and I mentioned a few jobs here because it pertains to how I now run my company so I worked as a waiter so I learned about a lot of a customer service I worked as a project manager at a medical textbook publishing company after college I learned a lot about project management and managing different facets of a project as as you do as a project manager and I worked as a director of operations at a facility at Wash U where I learned a little bit about operating a facility which I don't really use now but I also learned about operating people managing people and also importantly managing volunteers which ended up being really important to me and also a little bit about fundraising because it was a non-profit I did start two businesses before before still mark games one was called a type tribe which went nowhere was basically a very small company I had an idea I raised a little bit of money from friends and family it didn't go anywhere and I also started a local fiction book publishing company called blank-slate Press I helped I found it I think it has a different name now because I ended up giving back my shares in this company it was something that was fun for a few years I ended up moving on to focus on other things and in particular Stowe Meyer games so that's everything before 2011 let's jump to 2011 which was the year that I really became fascinated with Kickstarter and I'd been interested in Kickstarter for a while but 2011 it really clicked with me because I started to see board game projects show up on Kickstarter and I was fascinated by that because I had this hobby of designing board games and this passion for entrepreneurship but I really also liked the people side of entrepreneurship specifically and this how how it relates to Kickstarter I loved that you could actually know who your customers are and have a direct connection with your customers through Kickstarter and that in some ways that became more than just customers that became a community that became people that you that you know faces and names that you know and that could you could connect to and could help you build something better than you could alone so I just became fascinated with this idea putting a board game on Kickstarter and so I started to design a game with the intent of doing so there are actually a few different games that happened that I that I brainstormed and designed a little bit of but viticulture became that main game I have a pile of games next to me that I will show you I'll show you all the games that my company has published so far I'll get to them as the actually reach fruition as they become create because it right now viticulture was just an idea and it was just me working on it playtesting with friends and one of those playtests was with my friend Alan and his wife I think was just Alan and his wife and Alan contact it contacted me after the play test and said you know I really had a good time doing that I had a good time playing it giving you feedback what if I were more involved in this in this venture and I thought that was really cool I thought you know that that's what I need I like working alone I've run stole my our games largely alone but it was really helpful to have a partner in a business partner who could encourage me who could challenge me it could hold me accountable and you could be there really on especially as a play tester when I started to feel bad about asking all my friends to play test this game with me so it was nice to have someone that I could just rely on to play test the game we were just in it for the fun we we weren't paying ourselves I mentioned a certain point in time where we started to make up a little bit of money we're sort of pay ourselves a little bit but that did not happen for several years that was not at this point in late 2011 so good at 2012 that's it for 2011 I was designing game twenty twelve I continued to design viticulture ended up putting it on Kickstarter and before Kickstarter Alan and I both invested I think I think it was eight hundred dollars it was six hundred dollars or eight hundred others somewhere around there a very small amount of money just to cover some of the art to make the game possible we also had another investor at the time who ended up I ended up buying their shares fairly early on in the the growth of my company but our company but early on it was a very small investment I want to mention that number because it becomes a very different number later on in the in the in the growth of the company but very small investment early on we launched on Kickstarter it took I believe about two weeks for it to fund which is like forever in today's terms but back then there weren't many game projects on Kickstarter and it was it was a wonderful feat just a fun time mostly didn't know if that would happen and I didn't consider us even having a company until that did happen but we did fund on Kickstarter founded viticulture our Kickstarter I was kind of running the show I was working my full-time job I was also running the Kickstarter as a full-time job and we ended up raising about sixty-five thousand dollars over the course of this viticulture Kickstarter campaign which was which was amazing there are also some very close calls early on I guess I don't want to get too detailed than anything but I think this is relevant because there were two things that could have sucked my company very early on one was a stretch goal for metal coins that that if we had reached that goal we definitely wouldn't have had the money to make them and I would have had to dip way deep into my savings it might have been very treacherous for my company if I had done that or I may have had to go back on a promise to meet that stretch goal so I'm glad of it I'm actually usually I'm happy when I reach stretch goals or what anyone does I'm glad that we didn't reach that one metal coins I don't think are good for a stretch goal they're better for an add-on or a built in element to a adults game because they're so expensive the other thing is I kind of had this flat rate for worldwide shipping and which I thought was a good idea at the time at the time pretty much every project was was shipped almost by hand really like it was this was back in 2012 people were funding games and then sending them to their their garage or maybe their warehouse if they had a very small company and they would ship them themselves by hand to everyone around the world from that one location and so I kind of had that idea in mind as well and that I would ship everything and then I would take a small loss on international games but my math really wasn't very good and if I hadn't found a better solution that also probably could have changed my company very early on it could've seems tomar games very very early on fortunately I had a very important discussion with someone who was involved in the the company that was working full time for at the time and he brought up the idea of using fulfillment centers around the world so I mentioned this because this was like it's so commonplace now if you're familiar with Kickstarter this was not a thing back then creators were not doing this and what ended up happening is that I obviously did that I used this system where I plugged into different fulfillment center around the world I shipped our games should viticulture freight this was jumping forward a little bit to 2013 but I freight ship viticulture to this fulfillment centers and they dispatched the games to backers in those regions this is also known as like European friendly should be now Canadian friendly shipping if you ever see those little Michigan I'm a little proud of this I have to say because if you ever see those icons like European friendly can't a Canadian friendly if you see those on the Kickstarter project those were created by Stowe my other games like that was our thing we kind of invented this idea of worldwide fulfillment from these different fulfillment centers I'd only think complete credit for I'm sure someone else did it before us but we were the ones to really promote the idea to write about I wrote a very detailed blog post about how we did that and many creators have adapted it so if anything I'm pretty proud of that legacy that I found a better way to reach people worldwide and I love that other creators have adapted that and found other ways companies have sprung up around that idea entire companies exist because of that a concept that that we help to spread early on in the inception of my company I mentioned my blog there so there's this Kickstarter lessons blog that I write now it's not just about Kickstarter and crowdfunding it's also about entrepreneurship but working for yourself things like that leadership but that was something that must have been very early on or very late in 2012 after the viticulture Kickstarter funded because I wanted to share my mistakes and insights and everything I had learned from the campaign I wanted to outlet to share that and to engage with other creators because nothing like that also really exists at the time there wasn't there wasn't a as far as I was aware especially not an in-game space a blog or website that was just about how to run a Kickstarter campaign and I wanted that resource to be there for other creators so they wouldn't repeat the mistakes that I've run and that's become kind of a big part of the still my identity and the brand I write that blog two days a week I've done so it every week since late 2012 and I've learned a lot from the conversations I've had there but I also love that that again that we could we could add a little value to to the industry by having me write that blog and having guests the guests also write entries from time to time as well 2012 also was kind of the start of our ambassador program I'm not sure if I called it that back then but we have anyone can sign up to be a volunteer for still more games whether they're proofreading our games or or play testing our games or just moderating conversations about our games many different things that they can do if they just want to share their passion for my company and we called them ambassadors that program started unofficially in 2012 because I found that a lot of people through the viticulture campaign wanted to be engaged on a deeper level and wanted to help out and give up their time and their talent and I was really amazed by that that's now what made me that's what made me really fall in love with the boardgame community and industry and today that program has grown to around 1,600 people first Domeier games so that that's just amazing like we I don't know if we we probably would exist in some form but definitely not the way we are the quality we are today those volunteers make a huge impact another thing that started back then was our e-newsletter I'm mentioning some key points like this that relate to how my company has grown the e-newsletter I think is a crucial part of any company's growth it's how you bring people in and and give them a way of learning important information about your company at the times that you need to tell them that important information and i think the e-newsletter is still the best way to do that even with all the other forms of social media and so our e-newsletters started with pretty much just our Kickstarter backers so 942 backers maybe less cuz it was an opt-in thing you could just opt in to the newsletter today it's grown to over 40,000 people so a lot more people are engaged now than they were from those early days in 2012 two more numbers I'm not gonna get too deep into numbers but two other little numbers here that first print run of viticulture was 2500 copies so that was our first so you know pretty round of any game now our total print runs of all of our games and expansions have crossed the two million threshold we have two million products in print and that's not even counting all the little stuff like promos it even accessory is that's just expansions and core games 2 million from 2500 and last our revenue I I don't know if I wanted to go too deep into finances in this video but our revenue that first year was the 65 thousand that we raised on Kickstarter and last year in 2018 our revenue was close to 10 million it was nine point six million so I'm kind of if you would ask me back then when I when when we successfully funded viticulture if we would never be a company that could earn even a million dollars on one year much less ten million I would have been highly doubtful that that was possible and so I'm kind of amazed that we've had that that type of growth alright that's a lot for 2012 and 2013 was also a pretty big year 2013 was when we launched our second Kickstarter for euphoria one other quick thing about euphoria we and our funds were so wrapped up in viticulture we were fulfilling viticulture at the time and really all of the money earned from viticulture went into making and and distributing and fulfilling viticulture we did have some extra copies that we sold the distributors that was very helpful but we basically ran out of money and I had to take a loan or I decided to take a loan against my 401 K to fund the art and some other things for you for you so that was very tight so even after we had that $65,000 from viticulture was still very very tight to make before you happen fortunately the euphoria Kickstarter well I should show you these games I'm sorry I viticulture this is the first edition of viticulture here then I'm talking about you for you now here's the latest box said before he was a little different back then but pretty close before I went to Kickstarter and raised over $300,000 which again absolutely amazed me like I that was a huge jump from viticulture 65 to euphoria's $300,000 it was neat to see that people were starting to trust my company as a result of what we did with viticulture we delivered it on time we delivered a project that a product out needed some work still as I will talk about in a minute but it was largely well received and yeah so it was need to see you for you take off I was still working full-time at that time but soon after euphoria I I kind of realized that I I was working two full-time jobs I needed to have a little bit of give and take but I didn't want to take on the risk of just going full-time for snow miner that was a lot of risk of the time and I didn't think of that $300 as money in the bank because I had to actually spend a ton of it to make euphoria and spend even more of it to pay for fulfillment for euphoria later in 2013 so I asked my boss basically if I could take off one day a week to take off Wednesday to focus just on stone Meyer games and and have that my company pay me not my cup my uh my employer pay me twenty percent less so he was pretty happy about that because he got to pay me less and get essentially the same work out of me just over two days instead of five days or over four days into five days we also at the time actually in the summer we went to our first Gen Con and I also did some brief private consultation so I started thinking okay what's another revenue stream I can start to give people advice about the Kickstarter projects one on one individually privately and I pretty quickly realized that I couldn't add that other thing I I couldn't I couldn't focus on other people's companies in that way and such a private one-on-one way when I needed to focus a lot of my time and energy on running stomer games and meanwhile I was also writing this twice weekly blog about how to run a keep summer campaign and so I thought so I kind of make up drew drew hardline that if anyone ever wanted advice from me or feedback or just wanted to ask a question or share their insights that they would I would push them towards the comments of my blog and we would have those conversations there so that they were public they could help other people to other people could join in that conversation and I stopped doing private consultations pretty much at the end of that summer this was also around the time that we started to take on or bring in some localization partners and this was a key part reason why eventually at the end of 2013 decided to go full-time because not only were we having did we have some money left over after the euphoria Kickstarter but we also had localization partners around the world a few of them one in Brazil and one in France I believe at the time those were the two who who were who wanted to make our games and bring them to other gamers worldwide so that was really encouraging to me that we are suddenly had this other revenue stream that we could start to count on and then also in 2013 was our first charity auction we this has become an annual tradition usually in October November of each year and basically Alan and I felt very grateful that that our company had grown that people had come back to support us for euphoria and such a large number after viticulture we we were feeling good and we thought you know we we want to share this with other people we want to take this good thing that we've been very fortunate to stumble into and do something good to help other people too and so the idea behind the charity auction was that I selected I believe around 10 bloggers and content creators in the game industry that I really really loved and that I wanted to share with others and I asked them to each pick a charity of their choice and then we contributed a special copy of euphoria to to those those 10 auctions essentially for those different charities people could place bids for the games and and all the money would go to the auction due to the charity selected by those bloggers it was a wonderful thing it was pretty small at that point but as it's grown from year to year we've done in different ways every year last year we had a pretty big money match that we doubled all the money that came in and in total since 2013 we've donated over forty thousand dollars to charity as the result of that auction some of it other people's money who were donating to games that were giving away like very nice editions of games that were giving away and then a decent amount of it our own money that work that we're just matching there's uh there's a bid with so that's something I'm pretty proud of that we've done that we started to do in 2013 as I said at the end of 2013 I went full time for summer games with the idea being that I basically have enough money in the bank to give it a try for one year and if it really didn't work out then I'd find another normal job elsewhere and continue to maybe work on similar games as a hobby otherwise I would stick with stomer games and fortunately in early 2014 I ran the Kickstarter for Tuscany the first expansion that we had released and a pretty big expansion for viticulture and it did very well on Kickstarter raised over 450,000 dollars in Kickstarter so that give me some confidence that I was on the right path to to stay full time with stoneware games I realized this is a video that's somewhat about me just about as much about me as it is the company perhaps that's a turn-off for you I totally understand if it is another side of it is that ice I've committed basically my life to this company over the last about seven years since since 2012 Sony Oh 2011 it's a huge part of it I'm kind of the face of the company I am I'm still our only full-time employee and so and I typically work around 70 to 80 hours a week on this company so I would be part of it my story is very intertwined with the company's story so Tuscany short went really well also around that time early in 2014 I realized that I didn't want to do exclusives and exclusive content any more case to case over exclusives this was something that we did on euphoria where we had a few exclusives on there and I realized in 2014 that I I didn't like having to tell people no you can't buy this even though I have some of this in stock I can't I can't sell this to you because I made this commitment I like the commitment I respect the commitment and I respect creators who respect that commitment but it just didn't feel right it didn't feel right to say that we made this cool thing notably for for euphoria it was these nice gold bars we made this cool thing we have extras but we can't sell it to you because we said we're gonna be exclusive with it it didn't feel good it didn't feel it didn't feel right and that's when I started to really realize what my company about what still Miriam's was about and part of that was being inclusive being inclusive to all types of people and people who discover our games during the Kickstarter order went on for the first print run and people who discover our games five years later ten years later being inclusive to all those different types of people became really really important to me and Alan and our company's philosophy that happened in early 2014 and that's when we decided that we would make new special components not the ones that we had in euphoria but new versions of them with sculptor Scott wadi co who happens to live here in st. Louis and that eventually became what we called our still Maier Games treasure chest which is a special collection of unique resources this ended up becoming a pretty neat line of products for a company's accessory for a companies that was used for our games in a variety of other games that keep started happened later in the year I think it raised around one hundred and eighty thousand dollars I have that right somewhere around there 2014 was also the year that started this YouTube channel I think the channel existed before then but I didn't really use it for much and I realized that I didn't have an outlet to talk about game design or talk about the games that I was playing in a formal basis and I really liked talking about game design and what I loved about games I didn't want to be a reviewer because I'm so entrenched in the industry these other designers are my peers I don't I don't want to critique them rather I just wanted to share stuff that I loved and so the focus of my entire channel is my favorite game mechanism in pretty much every game that I play and so I've really enjoyed doing that I don't know the subscriber count that it was back then now I think it's around what 15,000 16,000 method I'm sure it was around 50 or 100 people it was hardly anything so if you do start a channel like that keep in mind that the growth takes a long time and that was I'm glad that I didn't really have any growth in mind I was like I just want to do this for myself and and start conversations about it and see where that goes what else happened in 2014 oh yeah 2014 this is a big one engine in 2014 we signed our first game that wasn't designed by me which is a big step it super games up to that point was a little bit of a vanity publisher and that like a self publisher we were essentially publishing my own games at our company and so there's a big step to say okay we want to publish other people's games too if they fit into our design philosophy and if we think we can make them beautiful and special and and unique and so that game became between two cities designed by Ben Raza and Matthew O'Malley that was discovered at an impromptu meeting at Gen Con 2014 now we also opened around that time I think a member of it was right before right after we did open a submission process where anyone could submit their games to us and we had some we've had some great games come out of that that I mentioned in a minute a couple big that 2014 was a big year so a few other things is that we started working with greater than games here in st. Louis as eventually what would become the company that we warehouse our games with our distribution broker which means they handle all the transactions and most of the engagement between in regarding our games between themselves and distributors because we weren't just selling games directly to people through Kickstarter we were starting to really get into why distribution worldwide distribution and sell our games to distributors who would then sell to retailers established through great in the games I also wrote a probably my first viral blog post which was called an open letter to game conventions from a tiny game publisher something to that effect and it focused on the play and win system that some conventions used then really I think geek way was the main one geek wait to the West here in st. Louis but after I wrote that letter to perhaps the the ire of many other publishing companies but I think it's a great thing many other conventions started to adapt this play and win model where basically you go to the convention you play a bunch of games every time you play a game in the plain wind section you write down your name and at the end of the convention they draw names out of a hat for each game that you played and you might win one of those games just for having plated so I think it's a wonderful marketing tactic where you're getting people you're giving people a reason to actually play those games right then and there at the convention and the convention brings in more people it's good for the conventions good for the publisher was good for the consumer playing win that came from that open letter wasn't my idea it was geek ways idea originally that I helped to spread and I'd love to see them happy to see that spread we also started to send a lot of games to reviewers we had done that for Kickstarter but we hadn't started to do that much after Kickstarter until 2014-2015 a little bit and now it's a huge part of our marketing strategy to send a lot of games and products to reviewers we also hosted our first design day in 2014 this was an event where we in September we had a bunch of people bunch of designers and just people who love games gather at a facility that eventually became we eventually moved into a place called pieces board game cafe and bar here at st. Louis a wonderful place of you if you want to go to a board game cafe but we have a different location originally and basically it was a place where people could come and play test their games and get feedback from other people about their games so it's not really a stomer focused event but it's a small event it was inspired partially by richard bliss of funding the dream just away to another way did kind of give back but also strategically a way for us to scout out a bunch of games at one time because a lot to go bring their games with the hopes that so we'll publish them so we get to scout out a bunch of games at that time even though people aren't necessarily pitching to store our games through this event at the very end of 2014 I don't know if you remember this if you're around but that's when I teased the Box image for size so I've been working on scythe with Yahoo brewski for a few months at that point we had the box image we've teased it in December on BoardGameGeek and within a few days it became it was either the most liked or this most of the second most liked image of the entire year on BoardGameGeek it really really connected with people so we kind of had an idea that that something big was gonna happen with side that if I could get the game right so I'm getting a bunch of text here and I'm doing this video live without editing so I got to keep on going I snapped was into 2014 that leads into 2015 which was a massive year for our company 2015 started with the between two cities Kickstarter which I already mentioned between two cities the game that we signed at GenCon we had the Kickstarter for it did very well raised over two hundred and twenty thousand dollars later in the year we did another treasure chest Kickstarter this was treasure chest two through four I don't have it on my pile here but we did it was a Kickstarter her three new treasure chests this time the tokens were greatly enhanced actually this was oh my started working with Scott before Panda had done the Scopes this this is when Scott buddy who came in and started doing the sculpts and took it to a whole new level Scott has an amazing modeler so we had these beautiful treasure chest tokens that were for a wide variety of games definitely not just for still more games at that point Morten menorah Peterson is a guy that started volunteering for still mire games back during the viticulture campaign and he had started he had made the autonomous system for Tuscany for viticulture in Tuscany which is a so an intelligent solo system for board games that he applied it to the viticulture on Tuscany Morton is now pretty famous for his work in the solar world back then it was just a hobby for him and I mentioned this in 2015 because we hired him part-time as a developer for our company Morton does a lot of different things now for us but he's still kind of unofficially a developer he I don't know if he that's the really the focus of his work but that's part of what he does but that was kind of a big deal for us because that was the first our first outside hire and actually I did skip over one thing I mentioned that Allen and I didn't pay ourselves for a long time we started to pay ourselves a little bit in late 2013 so we went about about 18 months without paying ourselves anything I mentioned that because if you are thinking about starting a company and you want to be inspired by still more games don't pay yourself for 18 months or do I don't care but it wasn't a priority to us to get paid we were doing it for fun and for love for for quite some time I'm still we hired Morton part-time mourns over a dead mark I've only met Morton I believed once maybe twice 2015 was also when my Kickstarter book my crowdfunding a crowdfunders strategy guide was released this was something that came about the previous year where a literary agent had approached me with a pitch for me to write a book about Kickstarter I did a lot of research into other companies there's a lot of interviews took some content for my blog incorporated into a book and it was published by a wonderful company called berrett-koehler and released in late 2015 this was also in late 2015 or like mid mid to late 2015 when again I don't have it on my stack game of games here but this is when I released viticulture essential Edition so this was a pretty important stepping stone in my company because up until this point the Durr culture had actually gone through two different editions it had gone through viticulture first edition viticulture second edition and then viticulture essential Edition and as proud as I am of viticulture essential I really like how viticulture essential worked out it was a tough thing to do because in some ways I feel like if you put out multiple editions you're kind of admitting to the world that you didn't do the best job in the first edition which which we didn't I had a lot to learn from that first edition of viticulture but I also think it takes courage to do that I'm not just saying that about me I'm saying that about every publisher designer out there who has the courage to say I can do better I can do a better version of this I can make it the art and the graph design better I can make the the mechanism stronger the theme stronger things like that and so but but it was kind of a time for me to say I want to get our games right the first time from now on we still make plenty of mistakes with our games not big mistakes like I did with comparing viticulture first edition to essential Edition but still mistakes but that was the last game that we did have multiple different editions for and really the only game that we had multiple editions for so far in that way the big thing the big ending for 20s 2015 was the side the Kickstarter this was definitely the biggest Kickstarter that that I've ever run at the time it was one of the biggest that had ever been run in the board game industry I think it was the biggest strategy game Kickstarter ever at the time he raised about one eight million dollars and it would end up as I will talk about in a minute being our last Kickstarter and so that brought my Kickstarter tally to around 3.2 million which is both a lot of money and compared to some massive Kickstarter's today less than a single Kickstarter can raise but at the time it was a lot of money to walk away of saying hey you know I've run seven tabletop game Kickstarter projects and raised 3.2 million it was pretty cool but sighs was I've decided on a huge amount of visibility in my company both during the Kickstarter and also jumping forward to 2016 when some stuff happened that I mentioned in a minute but before I get to that 2016 was when we started our Facebook groups which became has become like a huge part of the community aspect of my company we have groups for each of our different games this is the side peak starter edition one of the kicks or additions of side that's not even the legendary box so that was side we had these we started to form these Facebook groups I think the first one was for either side that a viticulture wasn't even started by me but I sort of did catch on to the idea I really like the idea of these communities communities forming around specific games not just on the summer games Facebook page and that's become a really neat way to see people engage with the exact game that they are passionate about we released more visitors and expansion for viticulture and what else do we do and and the token trilogy we did ran a high Renick campaign for the last set of realistic resources another trilogy of realistic resource boxes bringing that total to seven different collections of realistic resources they just got better and better and prettier every every time we get it thanks to Scott and thanks to Panda this was at the time that we fulfilled size so we get into the spring of 2016 we fulfilled size between zero and one and two months early for backers around the world and I won't get into everything that would happen during this time because it was largely very good like we were fulfilling early we were the game was extremely well received from the start but it was like the for me the emotionally emotionally the one of the darkest times at my company because it was it was a lot it was it was a lot more than I thought it would be and it led to us deciding soon after that that we weren't going to do Kickstarter anymore sucide while that wasn't the side of the plan we looked back inside and said okay that's gonna be the last Kickstarter that we do so I was 2015 right now I'm filming this in 2019 we're coming up on four years without using Kickstarter and it's been neat to see the growth of my company since then but it was also crucially important for those first few years for us to be on Kickstarter to have that that growth and learn a lot about customer service and and community and all the other things that you learn from for money in case for campaign so a couple other things in 2016 one is that I did a pre-order and made a Tuscany essential which became a slim or slim down version of Tuscany the expansion of viticulture we also put out late in the year I believe the first expansion for size expansion called invaders from afar and we started to work with meeple source we started to have a few really important partnerships this time we want with people source to sell promos for our games and one of the top shelf gamer to sell our realistic resource tokens outside of the original boxes that they came in because the boxes themselves are really really expensive at the not the cardboard itself but just the all the pretty mail that took us together in one box but we wanted the community to sell those tokens people wanted them so we had this partnership with top shelf gamer and we also had our first investor in 2016 if I have that date right it was either 2016 or 2017 we had someone who's interested invest in her company Allen wanted to sell some of the shares and so it worked out well for both of them to to collaborate in that way and have a little bit exchange of money and shares and stomer games at the time and still I own 90% of the company and a few other people own the other 10% 2017 2017 I just actually kind of a lighter year a little bit more streamlined here than other some of those busier early years and 2017 in fact there was just 27 years 2018 gets busy again in 2017 we had expansion for between two cities called capitals we I put out two new size products one called the legendary box which was a weird one to put out but it was basically an empty box just to hold a bunch of size stuff this was something that was almost purely a fan demanded basically fans wanted it and so I was like alright you want an empty box I'll make you an empty box I'll try to make it as good as I can and the other fan thing to come out of this and which is become a pretty big part of my company is fans coming to me with expansions that they've created and and and playtested and I see something in them and I work with that designer to make something happen and that was the wind gambit for an expansion two side kind of kai stark over in Germany created this expansion came to me I ended up working a ton on it with with Kai and really refining it turning it into something new but it also retained some core gional ideas from from his original concept and we since that we've done that with several other products as well where I've collaborated with someone else who came to me with an idea or I came to them with an idea that started with the wind gambit and all during this time I was working on a legacy game one of my favorite genres of games that came out late in 2017 and that would be charter stone now all throughout 2017 except for maybe except for the legendary box everything that we were doing we were selling just to distributors and distributors were selling to retailers we were doing very very little sales on our website there were no pre-orders we were just making something sometimes raising funds from distributors but largely just committing our money to something and making it and selling it to distributors and retailers which was a good strategy at the time it's evolved a little bit since then but that was that was what happened in 2017 and it ended leader with with charter stem taking a drink here goes 2018 was a big year for us a lot of stuff happening a lot a lot of social media stuff in 2018 this was the year that I joined Instagram for the first time I ended up using my own Instagram account maybe I should have created one for still more games but now it's kind of just the still mark games Instagram accounts under my name and I post every day on it put something related to games sometimes my cats sometimes dome our games this is also when I started doing Facebook live I do these weekly Facebook live chats every Wednesday at 10 o'clock 10 a.m. Central time where I get on Facebook live and just talk about some random stuff since tomorrow news I answer questions for about an hour so it's kind of like an hour long just Domeier TV show I also this was the year 2018 that I started doing these Sunday sit-down videos where every Sunday in addition to the to game design videos that I was doing on YouTube I would sit down on Sunday and talk more in depth about a topic it started with a video about red rising and then it's become a lot of them work like top 10 videos I talked about top 10 things and I talked about game mechanisms in those top 10 games in a certain category but that I was surprised to see that people wanted like my game design videos are about five minutes my son that sit-downs rain or some days sit down video videos range from like 15 to 30 minutes and I was really surprised to see that those are the videos that really brought people in and made people engage people like the game design videos but the channel really started to take off when I had those longer form videos which I still don't quite understand but I'm happy to keep making them and I enjoy making them this was also the year that we started we didn't start we started sponsoring a channel called the mill this was late in 2018 a fan of stomer games an ambassador named dusty crane I talked with him about the idea of he talked to me it was a mutual exchange of creating a channel where a nonsti mayer person but someone who cares about summer games is passionate about it creates a channel about stomer games content for fans to assistant have a community around our content in a different way that wasn't coming from me so that's the mill that's something that we sponsor to this day dusty does weekly videos on Saturday on the mail also related to videos we started we work with Rodney from watch it played to put out rules replacement videos for our games and we started adding deaf and hard-of-hearing transcripts to those videos actually they're just transcripts but they are for the deaf and hard of hearing and that was something that I wanted to bring into this idea of inclusivity that that's important to me and my company we started doing that with with Rodney Rodney's videos 2018 was also the first year that we had a digital version of our give a full a Idol version of our game this was scythes released to to the world I've been looking forward to this for a long time trying it with different games finally it happened with scythe and and that that has become side the digital 2018 was also when I started the champion programs Tamara champions it started with a very small number of people who basically the early idea and still the idea today was people could sign up to support the content that I create the the Kickstarter blog and my game is on YouTube channel they could sign up and pay him yearly fee of $12 to support that content and also along the way what that involved into is that those people would get perks like free or discounted shipping and they would be first in line to have their games shipped when they bought from us it was kind of a way to to let people if they wanted to thank me and thanks to Amara for the content that we create but also a way to to engage people who wanted to buy directly from us because as I mentioned in 2017 people were only buying from retailers and I started to hear from a lot of people that they wanted to buy from retailers but some people wanted to have the choice to buy directly from the publisher and I thought the champion program would be a way to champion that idea started with just a few people the champion program has grown to over 3,700 people who are now members of that program 2018 was also the first year that I implemented a total what five times this new pre-order system that I wanted to try out which is basically that we make a new products we let people preorder it and then we ship it to people very soon after that so it's not like a pre-order where your period or a pre-ordering and waiting for six months you're pre-ordering and at this point you're just waiting a few days early in 2018 you were waiting just you're waiting maybe maybe a month and then getting the game but I did that for my little side which was another of our games that was not designed by me my little side designed by Hobie Chow and his daughter we also did that for I don't know the game here but we did it for scythe the rise of Fenris the metal mechs for side side encounters and between two castles of Mad King Ludwig this is another game from bin rasa and Matthew O'Malley and this was actually the first time that we collaborated a little bit with another publishing company busy eight games because castles of Mad King Ludwig is one of my favorite games and I figured you know we're doing this castle themed game this is some of the game's mechanisms in this game we're very inspired by castles let's combine the two let's let's join forces a little bit we're the publisher of it but the Bezier was very supportive in helping us bring this game to life so we used the pre-order system for all those games that brings us to late 2018 when I announced a new game called wingspan and wingspan ended up being on pre-order in early 2019 and this has ended up being a pretty amazing product for us it's designed by Elizabeth Hargrave we had met with her at Gen Con a few years before that and I helped Elizabeth quite a bit over the next few years develop this game and turn it into into what wingspan is today but we've spent as I record this week spin is still causing us troubles but in a good way in that we have had trouble keeping up with the demand for wingspan I didn't realize how big of a hit it would be as quickly as it was because we didn't have the pre-order in January but it wasn't released to retailers until a few months later and we're still catching up to on demand we're getting there hopefully if you're what in this video deep into the future we have finally caught up on on wingspan demand but and in some ways it's a good thing even though I'm sorry for anyone out there who's pre-ordered it and doesn't have their copy yet but it's been kind of a good thing for a company because we hadn't really had a huge hit charter stone sold very well milah some of these other games so well but we had that a huge hit a huge like visible hit since scythe and wingspan has been that that research and hit for us has brought us a lot of attention I think it's brought a lot of non gamers into the Hobby too which is pretty cool a lot birders discovering games for the first time so that's wingspan wingspan later I shoulda very recently later in the year ended up winning one of the big German game awards called the kennerspiel which was the first time that any of our games has won an award of that level and really it doesn't get much higher than that other than the speedo ddr's the the slightly bigger award there are many other awards and accolades that games receive and that our games have received but that's definitely the the biggest and most visible the most impactful that any of our games has received so far in 2019 a few other things we released the first expansion for euphoria when the only extension for euphoria called ignorant says bliss I also released what I announced would be the last product for side the modular board so scythe has been a huge thing for a company we continue to plan we plan to continue to support it and and support the community around side and continue to reprint it so people can discover it well into the future but but we've we've spent a lot of time at world and now we're ready to focus on new worlds and in 2019 we also sold I mentioned that we worked with top shelf gamer to continue to sell these realistic resource tokens and in 2019 we sold that IP to top-shelf gamer so they had been they had been kind of running the show for a while with these tokens and doing a wonderful job and so when they came to us with an idea of selling the IP to them it just seemed like the right thing to do it was a mutually beneficial and it just seemed it seemed good to because they had put so much time and energy and and and resources into keeping that line of products alive so we sold that to top shelf gamers gamer so - I would end with our final game or not our final game but the most recent game before I get there are two other quick things about 2019 I am still are our only full-time employee I continue to work and not quite easy hours anymore it's more like probably 60 or 70 hours at this point but but I am our only full-time employee we still have Morten over in Denmark Morten works usually around maybe five to ten hours a week on stoma or game stuff we have Alan who works about five hours a week but everything else is outsourced and I'm kind of the hub for that I'm kind of the project manager for all the many different people out there all the independent contractors the manufacturers the shipping companies that that make my company exist makes nomar games exist but but I am our only full-time employee so we've grown so much but we're still very very small in terms of personnel we also we now have three games in the top 40 of a BoardGameGeek you at least as of the filming of this on August in August of 2019 so we have scythe in the top 10 we have viticulture somewhere around 20 and then wingspan just became the top the number 40 game on on BoardGameGeek and that's out of 8 total games that have been released and that brings us to our latest game which i just announced yesterday this is tapestry so this is a civilization game this is the first game that I designed for release since Charter stone this is a civilization game that's epic in scope it ranges from the beginning of time towards the the into the future really and it doesn't follow real world history this is a opportunity for players to create their own history and their own world really that's grounded is someone in reality but not there aren't historical figures there aren't historical moments that you're trying to capture you are creating your own historical moments when you play tapestry so this is our ninth product or ninth game our ninth brand that we're putting out so that's nine games over eight years I mentioned that because that again is a pretty crucially important part of our company that we we try to focus on quality over quantity we we are small we are big in some ways but we're also very small in terms of personnel and the number of games that we release and I like to keep that focused uh I keep that focus and I intend to continue to do that in the future because I want to put when I release a new game when I work on a game where they're on the designer or the developer or the publisher of that game I want to put everything I have into that game and to make that game as good as possible and to help people engage with that game for a long time not just when the game comes out but for a long time and so that's one of the reasons that we kind of take the slow approach this Days of Wonder approach of releasing one maybe two games a year and really putting a ton of time and energy and resources into those games I hope to continue to do that in the future so that my friends is a brief history maybe not so brief this is the longest video that I film for this channel but a somewhat brief history of stone Meyer games hopefully you've learned something about my company if you have any questions or you want to highlight any big things that I missed you're welcome to do so in the comments or if you have anything that you'd like to add from your perspective as whether you're a consumer or a backer or a lover or a hater another creator another publisher or the designer I'd love to hear anything that you want to share in the comments below and I look forward to continuing this journey with you well into the future again I'm Jamie from Samara games and I look forward to talking with you in the comments thanks
