Welcome to this episode of the Toy Business Unboxed Podcast, where we talk with Jason Miceli, founder of Phase Shift Games and the publisher behind the award winning Dungeon Drop. Jason built his company around a simple idea: games that use real three dimensional space are not gimmicks, they are strategy. In this conversation, he breaks down how a components only design contest turned into his flagship product, what it actually costs to run a solo publishing business, and where Phase Shift is headed next with a major Kickstarter expansion in March.
#183: The Secret to Infinite Board Game Possibilities – Toy Business Unboxed
Episode Highlight
- 00:43 Meeting Phase Shift Games founder
- 01:38 Why Jason loves 3D games
- 03:48 Explaining the Drop style mechanic
- 09:22 The contest behind Dungeon Drop
- 12:55 Designing around infinite outcomes
- 17:01 The goal of two Kickstarters
- 19:40 Why the team stays small
- 23:14 Trends shaping tabletop gaming today
- 25:34 Advice for industry newcomers
A Childhood Love For Three Dimensional Games
Jason Miceli grew up gravitating toward games with a real three dimensional element, drawn to titles like Sub War, Fireball Island, and Mousetrap. That instinct followed him into building three companies over the years, and it became the founding principle behind Phase Shift Games. Jason wanted the studio to push a dimensional boundary, using the space above the table as a genuine strategic layer rather than a decoration. That idea, doing something truly different with three dimensionality, is what Phase Shift has built its identity around.
The Drop Style That Defined Dungeon Drop
The mechanic Jason and his team coined as the Drop style is the foundation of Dungeon Drop, where players physically drop cubes onto the table to generate a random dungeon layout. Every turn adds more pieces, so the map keeps shifting and no two games play out the same way. Jason is careful to point out that the three dimensionality is never a gimmick, it is strategy that could not exist on a flat board. That distinction, he says, is what separates Phase Shift’s games from other titles that simply added a 3D element on top of a flat design.
How a Contest Entry Became a Flagship Game
Dungeon Drop began as a submission to a components only design contest run by The Game Crafter, where designer Scott entered a prototype with no printed cards or tokens, just physical pieces. Jason reached out to Scott before the contest even ended because the entry matched exactly what he wanted Phase Shift to represent. The two signed the game a week later and spent the next year developing it, adding characters and printed cards along the way. Phase Shift launched the Kickstarter for Dungeon Drop in 2019 and fulfilled the first printing in 2021.
Designing For Infinite Possibilities
The tagline on the box, instant dungeon, infinite possibilities, is not just marketing copy for Jason, it describes a real design challenge. Because the pieces drop randomly, the pillars that define a room could clump together, the dragon could bounce into an unreachable corner, or a key item could never land in a playable spot. Jason and Scott had to design rules that hold up no matter what the table looks like after a drop, so players never open a game and immediately feel like the round is unwinnable or boring. Designing for that much randomness, Jason says, is one of the hardest parts of the job.
From Filler Game To Flagship Line
Drop Drive is the spiritual sequel to Dungeon Drop, built with the same designer and the same dropping concept, but scaled into a much bigger, longer game. Where Dungeon Drop plays in 15 to 20 minutes as a quick filler, Drop Drive took two and a half to three years to develop after its 2021 Kickstarter, fulfilling in late 2023. Dungeon Drop has since won more than 10 awards, including Dice Tower’s top three family game of the year, and has sold roughly 50,000 copies. Together, Jason says, Dungeon Drop and Drop Drive have become Phase Shift’s flagship line.
The Economics Of Running A Solo Studio
Jason is candid about the thin margins in the board game industry, which is why he has not built out a team of full time employees. Instead, Phase Shift works with contractors around the world, including an art studio in Indonesia, a 3D sculptor in Brazil, and designers from countries like Greece and South Africa. Running two crowdfunding campaigns a year has always been Jason’s goal, since the overhead of the business is hard to sustain on a single launch, but he admits that pace is difficult to hit as a mostly solo operator. Even so, he has signed 10 to 12 titles from other designers and sees Phase Shift growing into a larger publishing company over time.
The Next Chapter: Drop Drive’s Second Sun Expansion
Phase Shift’s next big release is Second Sun, an expansion for Drop Drive launching on Kickstarter in March. Jason says the expansion will add a solo mode, a co-op mode, planetary invasions, contract crew mechanics, and a large storage solution called the cosmic crate. He is also weighing whether he can pull together a second major Kickstarter later in the year, though he admits that depends on timing and how much the business can support. For now, Second Sun is the campaign the team is fully focused on.
Advice for Newcomers in the Toy and Game Industry
Jason’s biggest piece of advice for anyone considering a crowdfunding campaign is to understand that launching one means starting a real business, not just sharing an idea. Kickstarter today rewards fully refined projects with professional art and graphics, and creators who are not ready for the cost, complexity, and fulfillment logistics that follow a successful campaign often struggle once the money arrives. He points out that pitching directly to an established publisher is still a realistic path, since creators can approach booths at conventions or send a rules document and pitch video directly. Whichever route someone chooses, Jason’s message is the same: know what you are signing up for before you start.
Conclusion
Jason Miceli’s path with Phase Shift Games shows how a willingness to lean into something genuinely different, in this case real three dimensional gameplay, can turn a contest entry into an award winning flagship product. His candor about the economics of solo publishing and the realities of crowdfunding offers a grounded look at what it actually takes to build a lasting game brand. With Second Sun launching in March, Phase Shift’s next chapter is already underway.
Connect with Jason Miceli
If you’re interested in learning more about Phase Shift Games or connecting with Jason Miceli you can reach out through the following channels:
- Website: Visit Phase Shift Games’ official website for the latest news, game updates, and more
- Instagram: Follow Phase Shift Games on Instagram for visual updates, game previews, and creative inspiration
- Facebook: Follow Phase Shift Games on Facebook for updates, discussions, and behind-the-scenes content.
- YouTube: Subscribe to Phase Shift Games’ YouTube channel for demos, tutorials, and exclusive game content.
Transcript
Jason Hsieh (00:43)
Welcome back to another exciting episode of Toy Business Unboxed podcast. Today we’re joined by another Jason, a visionary behind Phase Shift Games. As a founder of a world-winning tabletop game company, he has really revolutionized gaming space with his innovative Drop style gameplay with a lot of the different games that he created. And he also have launched dozens and dozens of very successful Kickstarter.
So he’s definitely a well of knowledge when it comes to crowdfundings and also for the tabletop gaming industry. So thank you so much for joining us on the podcast today.
Jason Miceli (01:16)
Thank you so much for having me. I’d love to meet another Jason in my travels.
Jason Hsieh (01:20)
Yeah, that’s a not a lot of people named Jason for sure. But for some of our audience that didn’t hear about your company yet, could you kind of first share with us what inspired you to get started in the industry first and how do you transition from your previous career into the gaming well the tabletop gaming industry?
Jason Miceli (01:38)
Yeah, I’m gonna answer that with my love for 3D and it’s gonna be a theme that we talk about, I think, throughout as I start telling you about some of the games and the innovations that we’ve done. But just growing up, like everyone, I had games in the house and we would play different kinds of games, but I always gravitated towards games that had a three-dimensional element. And maybe at the time it felt like a high kind of toy factor.
Jason Hsieh (01:50)
Of course.
Jason Miceli (02:06)
But that always stuck with me. Games like there was one called Sub War or Sub Battle, and it was like Battleship, but in 3D. Okay. Fireball Island had the balls that you know fell down the different tracks around the volcano. Mousetrap. I loved the game Mousetrap with the marble that goes down the tracks, and then the rat thing comes down. It was three-dimensional, it was kinetic, it was alive. And I was always drawn.
To those kinds of experiences. Yeah. And when I fast forward through three companies that I’ve built over the years, what I really wanted Phase Shift to stand for was games that push a dimension, like three dimensions, right? A game that pushes a dimensional boundary, in this case, space above the table. But there’s other dimensions as well, the dimensions of time and space and other ways that games can do really different things. I wanted Phase Shift to do really different.
Different things and one of the ways is with the three dimensionality.
Jason Hsieh (03:05)
Mm, I see, I see, I see. And I think that’s also what makes your product so unique. I think that’s not a lot of other games I see in the industry that do exactly the same gameplay that you have designed for sure.
Jason Miceli (03:16)
The Drop style, that is something that we’ve really coined and captured that part of the market. Other companies certainly have done 3D games. Yeah. I will say that when we employ 3D, it’s not just a gimmick, and that’s another key thing. It’s 3D strategy. It’s strategy where the three dimensionality is the only way the game could actually be done. It’s not a gimmick where we just made something 3D that could have been flat.
No, in this case you need the three dimensions. So I do think that those are important aspects.
Jason Hsieh (03:48)
Yeah, and since you’re so well known for pioneering this Drop style like gameplay, like dungeon Drop and I think you have a sample with you, will you mind sharing with the audience exactly how you work?
Jason Miceli (03:58)
So first of all, Dungeon Drop, yeah, the name says it all. We’re gonna do a dungeon crawl type experience where you’re going through the dungeon, you’re fighting goblins, and you’re trying to collect the loot. You wanna collect as much treasure as you can, like many dungeon crawlers. But the difference here is that to generate this dungeon, you’re dropping a whole bunch of stuff on the table. Yeah.
Start of the game and the stuff spreads out. And we have these little walls that, you know, we’ll make sure they don’t bounce off the table. But you’re literally dropping stuff and it’s spreading out and it’s forming the map of your dungeon for the game. And that is a unique map. Any infinite possibilities in this spatial universe. And now we’re actually manipulating where the different treasure and goblins and gems and things like that on the table are.
Yeah. In this game experience, but it’s that real world spatial environment. And by the way, it’s not just during setup that you’re dropping. Every single turn you’re exploring the dungeon and dropping more stuff in. And so stuff is getting added and moved and it’s constantly changing. And that creates just infinite possibilities. I mean, yeah literally we write that right on the front of the box. Infinite possibilities. And that’s what put us on the map for sure.
Jason Hsieh (05:15)
For sure. And how does the rule work? can you kind of walk us through the gameplay from kind of just a quick highlight?
Jason Miceli (05:22)
Sure,
It’s a very simple game. So a game turn has three phases. Phase one, explore. And like I said, that means we’re adding more stuff. You’re drawing from the box, you would use the box lid to hold a a bunch of cubes, and you’re drawing from the lid a certain number of cubes based on the player count, and you drop them in the middle of the table and they get added to the dungeon. Great. So that’s step one. Step two is everyone has a character which is made up of a culture and a class.
Like you might be the shadow folk cleric, or you might be the fairy ranger. So everyone has a a culture and a class card that come together and they have different abilities. And so in phase two, you’re gonna use one of your two unique abilities. And these are things that let you move things around on the table. Maybe you can flick a cube and you wanna get maybe a treasure, you’re gonna flick a treasure cube into the room that you want to loot at the end of your turn because you really want to get
That treasure, everyone has a secret quest as well, and you want to get certain treasure that matches your secret quest. So phase two is you’re using your character’s unique ability. And then phase three in the game is you loot a room. And that means that of all this stuff on the table, you’re gonna define where’s the room that I’m gonna loot. And a room is defined by pillar cubes. So in the box, some of the cubes are pillars, they’re like the things that hold up the walls.
Every three pillars forms a triangular room, and there’s thousands and thousands of possible rooms. So you’re defining that cube, that cube, that cube, that’s my room, and hopefully it has everything that I want in it. And maybe monsters have been moved out, so they’re not gonna hurt me. And I collect everything from that space and it goes on my quest.
Jason Hsieh (07:05)
Okay, okay, okay.
Jason Miceli (07:07)
That’s
A full turn and the game is fast. It goes around the table three times. So you take three turns and that’s it. And then you count your loot at the end of the game.
Jason Hsieh (07:15)
What if this monster in this room
Jason Miceli (07:16)
So if there’s monsters in the room, so goblins are little green cubes and trolls are larger, like olive colored, and then there’s a big dragon. Yeah. Basically if you loot a room that has a goblin in it or multiple goblins, you take the goblin cubes and you put it onto your culture card, like your shadow folk card, it has little heart symbols that represent your health. You just put the goblin cube right on the heart and it shows that you have damaged, you’ve taken damage from that goblin.
A troll
Will cover two hearts. And then the dragon would kill you. You actually need to get a magic shield before you can go into the room with the dragon. But it’s very, very kinetic. You just take that cube and you put it right on the heart, covers it, and now you essentially you can’t go into a room. You can’t loot a room if it would take your last health. You can’t kill yourself in the game.
Jason Hsieh (08:03)
I see. And at the end of the game you just count out which player have the most loot.
Jason Miceli (08:07)
The most loot yeah, and everyone reveals their secret quest and maybe I also wanted to have locked treasure chests or I wanted to kill the most small monsters like goblins or skeletons. Everyone has a secret quest and that gives you more points as well. And then gold are worth one and treasure chests you roll and see how much are inside and gems are scalable and all that kinds of stuff.
Jason Hsieh (08:19)
That’s also a personal quest.
Yeah, so you’re correct. The possibility is really endless. It depends on how you show up on the board too. So that’s a lot of different combination and a lot of combination for the side quest. Okay, okay, I got it now.
Jason Miceli (08:40)
And the game takes like 15 to 20 minutes. It really is meant to be very fast, family friendly, very approachable and accessible by a wide audience.
Jason Hsieh (08:51)
Did you start with different character as well as part of the game.
Jason Miceli (08:54)
Yeah, the base game has 15 different cultures and 10 different classes. And so you’re drawing one or you’re selecting one of the cultures, one of the classes, so every combination, whatever 15 times 10 is, right? that’s 150 combination.
Jason Hsieh (09:09)
Okay. That’s yeah, definitely a lot. So when you first started, since you’re the one kind of made up or created this way of playing, like how do you approach the design originally and what kind of challenge do you face in the process?
Jason Miceli (09:22)
So that’ll be fun. First of all, I am the publisher in Phase Shift Games. The designer is Scott, and we found him and we found this design. This was a contest winner on a site called the Game Crafter. The Game Crafter is a great site, you know about them. So they run design contests all the time. And this design contest was called the components only challenge. What the designers were encouraged to do was come up with a game that doesn’t have
Any cards or printed tokens or printed counters of any kind. Basically no printed components, just components. And so a lot of people submitted a lot of designs. And Scott had submitted one, and it was called at the time Dungeon Drop. And he was just, as he describes it, he was on his way to the grocery store driving. And he just had this thought about, what if.
What if we Drop a bunch of stuff on the table and it spreads out and everyone has a die? So there are no characters, right? Because no printed cards. So there were no characters in this. Your die, a six-sided die, was your character. Yeah and you would just roll it. And if it was a two, that would be the speed that you would go at, which might be low. Okay. Meaning you go first, but it also meant that that you only had two health.
Jason Hsieh (10:37)
I see.
Jason Miceli (10:38)
Points I was talking about. So it had a counterbalance there. You would go first, but you’d have low health. And then the people who rode like a five or a six would go later, but they would have a lot of health. So you could go into a room that would have a lot of goblins in it. And your die was your character. That was it. There were no special abilities. It was just dropping stuff. Finding a room based on the triangle. Okay. And then you would just bump your die down as you took damage from the goblins. So he ended up winning this design contest. Okay, okay.
Jason Hsieh (11:06)
Okay.
Jason Miceli (11:06)
Actually, I reached out to him before the contest ended, because I saw the finalists and I said, That one matches what I want Phase Shift to be. Because it was doing something different. It was using this three dimensional space. It had this dropping mechanism, which is not a common mechanism in games. There’s one or two games out there that do it, but usually they’re dexterity games, like you’re flicking and trying to destroy something. This was different.
And I fell in love with it and we ended up signing the game with him a week later and then developed it over the next year. And then we added characters, we added cards. Like we didn’t need to keep it components only. We could do printed cards and tokens just for the original design contest. But that’s where it came from. And to answer the second half of your question, what were the challenges?
Jason Hsieh (11:55)
Yes.
Jason Miceli (11:55)
Scott and I, because he and I still design a lot and develop a lot of games together, including this one and subsequent ones that have spun off. The design space is so interesting and sometimes hard because that tagline, instant dungeon, infinite possibilities. It is truly infinite. And what that means is anything might happen. When I Drop stuff, what happens if all of the pillars? I mentioned pillars. What happens if all the pillars
Are clumped together in one portion of the board. What happens if the dragon bounces way in the corner and you can never get it? What happens if the magic shield never comes out and lands in a room that I can go and get? Right? Like anything is possible. So we have to design for all of those possibilities in the rule. And we have to make sure like that that we’re not boxing ourselves in a corner that
You never want to have a situation where people Drop everything at the start of the game and look at the board and say, Well, this’ll be boring or it’ll be impossible or it will be, you know, you know, whatever, just an unfun game. We don’t want that response. So designing in this infinite space definitely brings unique challenges.
Jason Hsieh (13:09)
Yeah, yeah, yeah, for sure. And how long from the design to final like version?
Jason Miceli (13:14)
That one was probably about one year ’cause we started the company in 2018. Yeah. And we launched the Kickstarter for this in 2019. And then we fulfilled it at the beginning of well, this was the new printing, was 2021 Anyway, it took about a year. I will say that subsequent games that I’ve worked on with Scott, like Drop Drive, which was
Kind of the follow on that one took two and a half almost three years. That one longer because that game is a bigger game. It’s more of a like Dungeon Drop you would call a filler something you do very like at the beginning or the end of the night or as a filler in between. Whereas Drop Drive is a full game. And I mean they’re both full, but you know what I mean, right? Like
Jason Hsieh (13:45)
Even longer.
Much longer yeah, much longer to play, yeah.
Jason Miceli (14:05)
And and we did more interesting things in that one. So yes, the design space in that one became even more complex and it took us a solid we ran the Kickstarter in 2021. Yeah. And we fulfilled it in late 2023, almost 2024 maybe. Basic it took like two and a half solid years of development after the Kickstarter. I see.
Jason Hsieh (14:29)
I see, yeah, yeah, yeah. Definitely a lot more involved in the in the concept.
Jason Miceli (14:33)
And it was worth it ’cause that game is I mean, we’re about to come out with an expansion for it on Kickstarter coming up in March and it’s just it’s fantastic. It’s my favorite game that we’ve published so far.
Jason Hsieh (14:44)
I see, I see. Thank you so much for sharing that. And I think also with the Dungeon Drop you have not just the competition that you mentioned, you also got a lot of different various of awards along the way as well.
Jason Miceli (14:55)
We have yes, I mean that game, Dungeon Drop, won over 10 awards at this point. You know, including the Dice Tower top three family game of the year. That’s probably the most prestigious award that it’s won. Yeah, I mean that was a few years ago now. But yeah, I mean it’s done great. It’s still selling, it’s still selling well. It’s still our flagship game. Kind of that plus Drop drive together our flagship line.
And then of course it’s spawned off other great projects as well.
Jason Hsieh (15:24)
I see, I see. Looking back, I know both of the game have a pretty significant long game development cycle. What part of this process do you enjoy the most? Do you enjoy the concept, the design, or playtesting, or anything else?
Jason Miceli (15:38)
Yeah, I think a lot of publishers would say that they like or love almost all aspects of it. I can say for myself I do love almost every aspect of running the business. And that is everything in the game, design, development process, yeah, refining, going through the manufacturing.
I also don’t mind dealing with the fulfillment logistics and the e-commerce and dealing with Amazon and all this other stuff that a lot of times can become more tedious or paperwork that people don’t want to do. I will say this, the thing that gets in my way sometimes the most is like rule book editing and development, layout and graphic design. That’s where I fall a little short. And so I’ve certainly learned
Where do I need to pull in some other people to help? That’s one of the areas I can admit. But all the business aspects and all of the game design and development. I mean, I’m surrounded by prototype here that I’m working on for another game. I’ve got random ideas over here for expansions. I’ve got, you know, prototypes that people have been submitting to me that I’m reviewing. I there’s just, you know, it’s there’s no end to the stuff. And I love all of it. I really do.
Jason Hsieh (16:52)
Yeah, but looking ahead in the future, what is the plan? Are you launching more product this year and the upcoming year? If so, what is the pace of the product launch you’re trying to do?
Jason Miceli (17:01)
Well, the pace that I’ve always wanted to get to is two crowdfunding projects a year. I haven’t gotten there yet. It’s pretty much one because they just turn out to be bigger projects than expected. Now technically this year I will have run two because right now we have an enamel pin campaign that we’re running, which ends in two days. But that is not the same as running a game campaign. That’s
Jason Hsieh (17:07)
Yeah, okay, okay.
Worry. Yeah.
Jason Miceli (17:29)
Little enamel pins. That’s a side project. I mentioned Drop drive. Here’s the box for a Drop drive. This is like the the spiritual sequel to Dungeon Drop. The same designer, same concept, instant space, infinite possibilities, but it’s a bigger game. It’s more going on, it’s gonna take you longer. And we are about to launch the expansion for it called Second Sun. Prototype. This will be on Kickstarter in March. Okay.
Jason Hsieh (17:53)
Okay, okay.
Jason Miceli (17:57)
So that’s the next big release for us. This is gonna be an important Kickstarter, it’s gonna be an important expansion for this great game because it’s gonna add solo mode, co-op mode, it’s gonna add planetary invasions, contract crew. We’re gonna have a big box storage solution that we call the cosmic crate. There’s gonna be a lot of really fun stuff in this one. So that’s happening in March.
Jason Miceli (18:23)
And then the real question is, will I be able to do another big Kickstarter in the fall? I’m working on over here, maybe. We’ll see if I can actually get it in time.
Jason Hsieh (18:28)
In the fall. Okay.
Yeah, it’s a lot of work to kind of put the campaign together and get everything ready and everything in place.
Jason Miceli (18:41)
Yeah.
But getting to two a year really like the economic side of the business kind of depends on like there’s so much overhead in just running the business so much that you have to pay for baseline. And if I’m only doing the one campaign and if it only brings in a certain amount, then it’s really hard to keep the business kind of constantly growing. Getting to two a year was always my sweet spot goal. Yeah. I’m a solo on my own, so it’s sometimes hard.
Jason Hsieh (19:08)
Yeah, that’s definitely a lot of work. I notice a lot of like smaller publishers like try to remain small as like a team size. Is that intentional or you just don’t want to hire people? Or I was just always curious about that. Because I’m always opposite. When I first started the toy company, I immediately want to hire people to delegate work because I don’t want to do all the work myself. So, but I have been talking to other publishers, that prefer to have the team that’s much smaller.
Like sometimes just one or two people team that’s like handling ten different product. So…
Jason Miceli (19:40)
Yeah, I think there’s a couple things. Number one, margins in the board game industry are very, very, very razor thin. And so it’s hard you have to really have successful titles. Evergreen titles. Multiple evergreen titles that go back for reprint constantly and every year you’re printing another five, 10, 15,000 copies, and it’s just selling, selling, selling. Dungeon Drop is a great seller.
Jason Hsieh (19:54)
Titles.
Jason Miceli (20:07)
We have sold about 50,000 copies total, which is a really good success in this industry. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Still not ever like I’m still selling it regularly, but we’re doing small print runs. I would not call it an evergreen that we are getting, and every year we’re getting thousands of new sales. So hiring employees that depend on the salary that they would get from the company, that’s hard. Like I can barely pay myself to
Keep it afloat and that’s why I do other work on the side, you know, for a full time salary. This is addition to that. So I would say that’s one thing. Another thing is I think a lot of publishers, especially the small publishers that just get into it, they just started as they designed their own game. They launched their game. And it turned into a business. Yes. But they aren’t in it to become
Jason Hsieh (20:52)
Yeah, a lot of people do it that way.
Jason Miceli (21:00)
AEG or you know Floodgate, like where they’re just signing other people’s games and building a publishing company. They’re in it for their own game and they might eventually design another game and then launch it. But it’s more of like them as an independent studio, an independent publisher for their own stuff. I have always wanted this to grow. I do have aspirations to be bigger and I mean we have 10 or 12 titles at this point with different
Jason Hsieh (21:26)
That’s a lot of titles, yeah.
Jason Miceli (21:28)
Designers and I am not the designer of any of them except the one that I’m working on over here. I might finally launch my own design, but yeah we have signed other designers and other titles. So I am setting the stage for something that could grow into a hopefully a larger publishing company over the long term.
Jason Hsieh (21:46)
Yeah. Yeah, thank you so much for sharing that. And I just wondering because I think maybe there’s more information or education that you know we should share among the industry on how do we get more affordable help from overseas. Obviously hiring from North America is super expensive. But if we can hire from overseas help, like me personally, I love hiring employees from Philippines. It’s really affordable, they are really hardworking and they speak English sometimes better than I do.
Because English is my third language. I also speak Chinese and Japanese. So maybe that’s some education that still needs to be done in the industry on how can we really grow each of our publishing business and really push and share more of the wonderful game that we all have kind of bring to the market more to the potential audience. So people can enjoy more innovate a game like the one you have as well.
Jason Miceli (22:35)
I will say when I contract out for art or 3D sculpting or some graphic design, I bring on contractors from all over the world. Our primary art studio is in Indonesia. Our last 3D sculptor that we work with is in Brazil. Most of my designers are from all over. We have designers from and actually we have an artist from South Africa, we have a designer from Greece, another designer from
Yeah. Right. Like so yeah, we’re bringing on team members, but they’re not full time employees.
Jason Hsieh (23:05)
I see, got it. In your opinion, what are some of the most excited trends you see in the tabletop gaming industry right now?
Jason Miceli (23:14)
Yeah, I was thinking about this question and I’m gonna have an odd answer, I think. So there’s always spikes of activity in the industry. Roll-and-writes became a really big fad, right? I think especially during the COVID years. Legacy games. Once a legacy game emerged for the first time, whether it was risk legacy or pandemic legacy, whatever the first one was, then it grew into this big industry.
Jason Hsieh (23:24)
Yeah.
Jason Miceli (23:40)
Trick taking games have been on this massive resurgence and it’s spite and everyone’s making trick taking games. So there’s always these like escape room games is another one. The latest fad is cozy games. Games that make you feel good. And we have a game that I call cozy now because that’s what everyone’s doing. So we’ll do it too. Now what am I most excited about in the industry? I love to see that it keeps growing.
Jason Hsieh (23:53)
Cozy games are…
Jason Miceli (24:08)
Yeah. Almost growing too much. Like there’s so much saturation. There’s so many Kickstarters. There’s so many great games. There’s so many new publishers. So it’s good on one hand. I like seeing all the fads that grow. Some of them I like, some of them I don’t like. So I mentioned Roll and Wrights and Trick Taking. I will say something that I like right now is that both of those are on the decline because I I don’t personally love Roll and Writes.
Or trick taking games. So I see. I’m glad that we’re kind of past that fad and moving on to whatever the next things are. But I guess I love that the quality of games continues to elevate and improve the uniqueness of games. Certainly Phase Shift. That’s what we’re all about. And that we’re not alone. Every publisher is trying to find their own unique angles and things that set them apart. Let’s keep innovating. Let’s keep
Coming up with new dimensions that we can push and just continuing to see the industry grow and new things emerge, like those different fads. Escape Room Games certainly was like a whole new explosion of stuff. Legacy was an explosion of stuff. And I don’t know what the next one is, but I am eager to see what will come out next beyond cozy.
Jason Hsieh (25:18)
I see, I see, I see. Thank you so much for sharing that. And as we’re kind of wrapping up today’s interview, the last question I would like to ask is if you have to share just one piece of advice with someone that’s getting started within the toys and game industry, what would that be?
Jason Miceli (25:34)
Yeah, the biggest piece of advice I have seen other publishers and mentors give, and I will give it as well. And that is if you are starting out and you and you see yourself possibly heading down the road of launching a crowdfunding campaign. Kickstarter, game found, backer kit. Know that you are starting a business. You’re when Kickstarter first came out, it was about helping people bring their ideas to life. You didn’t have to have a fully baked idea.
You just had to have a neat idea and get people to rally behind it. That’s not the world of Kickstarter anymore. When you launch a Kickstarter, you need to be so refined, you need to have this thing so ready. You need to have pro art, pro graphics. I mean, not a 100%, but you will not launch a successful campaign if you don’t have most of this stuff in order. Thing is, you will you may not realize the risks associated.
The costs associated and the complexity associated with once that campaign ends, you don’t just take that money and now great, you’re starting to live on it, whatever. This happens so often that you can’t get the campaign out the door. You can’t actually fulfill it because you have the money. You didn’t realize how hard it was going to be, how expensive it was going to be, how to ship stuff worldwide.
How to work with 3PLs, how to work with Amazon, how to work with e-commerce, right? You have to know that you’re getting into running a business. What’s the alternative? Pitch. You can still pitch games to publishers. It’s probably one of the few industries where you can walk up to a publisher at a convention. Not everyone, everyone’s busy, but you can walk up to a booth and say, I have an idea. I’d love to show it to you.
Can I show it to somebody? And very often they’ll walk you into a room or a table over to the side and say, Hey, show me what you got. And I do this myself. I will be happy to see pitches. I see pitches all the time at conventions, online, send me a YouTube video, send me a rules document or a sell sheet or whatever. It’s one of the few industries where you can still pitch your idea, get a publisher to talk to you and maybe pick up your title.
Now I will say that’s also harder in the more recent years. Everyone is pulling back tariffs and the price of raw materials and the complexity with shipping and the cost of shipping. Everything is getting even harder. So it’s a hard industry. But you can still do these things. You can make it
Jason Hsieh (28:01)
Yeah, I think just you need to get better as well. We all need to get better as an industry and business owner to be more sophisticated, doing a lot more marketing and just be top of our game in order to survive and really still grow despite of all the difficulty with tariff and all the other situations. But I think overall industry wise it’s still growing despite of all the issue.
Jason Miceli (28:22)
Very much. Very much is so.
Jason Hsieh (28:23)
So but thank you so much again for being on our show and share your story and your journey. Where is the best place for people to find more information about you and your company online?
Jason Miceli (28:32)
Yeah, so phaseshiftgames.com is the main website and we use that exact same label on all the socials. So if you just search phase shift games, you can go to our website. We’re actually in the you know finishing up a big warehouse moving sale so you can get a nice discount on our games that we have on our e-commerce site. But that’s where you can go to check us out. You can reach out to me. There’s a contact us form right there. I’m happy to chat with anyone about anything. I love the industry and I love board games.
Jason Hsieh (29:01)
Okay, thank you so much. We’ll make sure we put that in the show note. And thank you so much for your time today. Thank you. And thank you for our audience for tuning in for this episode of Toy Business Unboxed Podcast. I hope today’s conversation gives you some practical insight and fresh inspiration for potentially growing your own toys or game brands. This podcast is proudly brought to you by Toy Launch, a leading marketing and growth partner for toys and game companies. At Toy Launch we help brand scale on Amazon and beyond through full service account management.
Jason Miceli (29:06)
You Jason.
Jason Hsieh (29:29)
Advertising, SEO, creative, catalog optimization, influencer marketing, and more. If you’re looking for a proven team that really understands the toys and game industry and e-commerce marketing, we’re here to help. If you like a personalized breakdown of your brand, your opportunity, and the best next step, you can schedule a free consultation with us. Just visit toy-launch.com/schedule. And if you want to connect with other toys and game founders,
Join our free community Toys and Game Launchpad that we just recently launched on Facebook. And for more resource, updates, and industry insight, visit us at any time at toy-launch.com. Until next time, keep innovating, keep creating, keep bringing joys through toys. This is Jason Hsieh signing off on the Toy Business Unboxed Podcast. We’ll see you in the next episode. Thank you so much, everyone. Have a good one.
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