In early 2024, as we were coming out of COVID, the company I was working for imploded and I lost my job. Working in the tech field, I had marketable technical and leadership skills, so I found a new job within a couple of months. Although it was an individual contributor role, I was happy to join a company that had a great culture and good people to work with. Unfortunately, by the end of 2025, my role had been reduced in capacity, and I found myself with extra time on my hands and a limited income.
These are the moments in life where you face a decision. I could hit the streets again, look for another job in the tech field, adapt to changes brought on by the exploding growth of AI, or I could choose to do something for myself. After years of indecision about whether or not to get into game design, I decided to throw my hat fully into the ring and dedicate myself to designing my first game.
Technically, that is not entirely true. In 1996, some friends from college and I worked together to develop a version of fantasy baseball based not on accumulated stats, but on daily results in head-to-head matches. Within a few years, using my background in web development, we had a live website to support our fantasy baseball game. A couple of years after that, I was advertising the game to players around the world, and soon had thousands of users on our site.
The success of the Statheads Sports fantasy baseball game led me to develop similar games for fantasy football and fantasy basketball. I loved it. These were the days before big competitors like CBS Sports and ESPN were serious about their fantasy sports games, so small operators like me could flourish.
Yet, as with all things that can make money, soon the big players took over the field and small sites like mine began to lose their audience. I reached the point where I could no longer support fantasy games year-round, so I removed the fantasy football and fantasy basketball options to settle on supporting fantasy baseball for six months out of the year.
"When I look at the board game community, I love what I see. It is broad, creative, and inclusive, and it makes people happy."
This year, the 29th year of Statheads, we have a small, dedicated community that returns annually. The players manage anywhere from one to six teams across a dozen leagues, and they continue to support and enjoy the game as my friends and I originally envisioned. So, while I am new to commercial board game design, I am not new to game design for a community of fans. I am also old enough to know what I do not know, and I set out to learn as much as I could about the board game industry.
I began by finding and following as many online voices in the industry as I could. From content creators who focus on RPGs, to game design communities on Facebook and other platforms, I soon found there was a treasure trove of information available if you just looked for it.
I also decided to put my money where my mouth was and invest financially to force myself to take this seriously. I enrolled in an course taught by Emerson Matsuuchi, and it was enlightening and eye-opening. I found myself in a cohort of over 80 aspiring game designers with varying degrees of experience, and it was refreshing to see how much passion and interest there is in the board game industry.
The ELVTR course curriculum included developing a game in parallel to the course content. You used your game as a living project to submit periodically for feedback and as a final assignment. My rookie mistake was choosing a game concept that had been floating around in my mind that turned out to be very complex, with a large set of components and a presumably $100+ retail price. It was definitely not something I should produce as my first game.
Once the course was done and my complex strategy game had gone through multiple rounds of prototyping and even some live playtesting at WonderCon, I decided to put it in the backlog. I chose to focus on a smaller game that I could develop from start to finish and publish through crowdfunding. I have many games in my mrntal closet so I picked one that is fun for groups as well as a good learning opportunity for me, novice board game designer.
And that is how I am currently developing Beyond Bluffing, which is a light-hearted card game for families and friends. Like most game designers, I still have my daytime job, which is part-time and pays the bills. This allows me to spend many hours a day focused on game design, playtesting, development, manufacturing, shipping, fulfillment, and crowdfunding (the list is quite long!)
Through my choices and my actions, I am making the pivot work. Thankfully, I have a community of game designers, a small group of testers, and friends and family to support and encourage me. This is my next, and probably last, career. When I look at the board game community, I love what I see. It is broad, creative, and inclusive, and it makes people happy. Once again, I am excited for what I choose to do every day.