Welcome to a fascinating exploration of how toys and games can enhance creativity, strategic thinking, and social skills. In this episode, we dive into the world of Blaine McDonnell, a seasoned technologist and innovator behind Base6, a game platform that redefines play, learning, and social interaction. Whether you’re an entrepreneur, educator, or parent, this post will illuminate how game design principles can foster growth and innovation. Discover practical ways to incorporate Blaine’s platform into classrooms, family activities, or brainstorming sessions.
#147: Inside the Mind of a Futurist: Building Something Bigger Than a Card Game – Toy Business Unboxed
Episode Highlight
- 00:00 Introducing Blaine and His Game Design Journey
- 01:22 The Inspiration Behind Base6
- 03:02 Understanding the Gameplay of Base6
- 06:54 Fostering Creativity and Communication Skills
- 07:49 Target Audience and Flexibility of Gameplay
- 08:32 Building a Creative Ecosystem
- 11:52 Using Base6 in Educational Settings
- 12:57 Challenges in the Toy and Game Industry
- 13:43 Future Plans for Base6
- 15:16 Advice for Aspiring Toy Entrepreneurs
From Innovation Labs to Game Design: How One Futurist Found His Calling
Blaine McDonnell’s journey began in the innovation labs of AT&T, where merging technology with creativity sparked his passion for game design and social learning. His exposure to futurist thinkers like Jane McGonigal, who popularized gamification, fueled a desire to create tools that ignite cognitive flow and continuous creativity. Blaine emphasizes that playful, effortless flow is at the heart of learning. “It’s about sparking that flow in people so they keep flowing,” he says. This philosophy influences his Base6 platform, which leverages classic game elements like cards and dice, reimagined to foster creative storytelling, strategic thinking, and social skills.
How a Tech Background Shaped a Creative Toy Platform
Blaine’s Base6 game isn’t just a traditional toy. It’s a system designed to empower users to create, share, and innovate. The game’s core features include 182 cards and 10 dice, blending influences from UNO, Dominoes, storytelling cubes, and standard playing cards. Players combine images, actions, and spatial relationships to craft stories, puzzles, or educational lessons. Teachers can adapt these mechanics for classroom storytelling, project planning, or team-building activities. Imagine a class using cards to brainstorm product ideas or craft stories, which also develops their language and critical thinking skills.
Behind the Design of the Base6 Game: A Platform for Creativity
Envisioned as more than a game, Base6 is a platform built for innovation. It fosters community building, educational integration, and a creative ecosystem where teachers can design lesson plans around card prompts, guiding students to generate stories or pitches. The platform encourages users to modify and build upon it, maximizing engagement and relevance across age groups and contexts. Plans are also in the works for a rule set template, enabling educators and entrepreneurs to customize gameplay mechanics around specific skills such as lateral thinking, negotiation, and visual spatial reasoning.
Innovation Inspired by Technology: From Hardware to Play
The vision extends well into classrooms, where Base6 promotes storytelling, imagination, and creative pitching. Students combine cards to develop characters, settings, and plots, learning to communicate and persuade through drawing and storytelling. This layered approach cultivates a pipeline of skills including imagination, communication, and strategic thinking. Game based learning has a unique power to make abstract skills tangible, and Six proves to be a versatile tool for fostering innovation and social skills across any learning environment.
Using Six in Education to Cultivate Critical Skills
Like many entrepreneurs, Blaine cites marketing as his biggest challenge. Getting the word out amidst a crowded toy and game marketplace. He underscores the importance of action: “Be afraid, but take action.” The entrepreneurial journey requires persistence, visibility, and community engagement. Focus on building a community around your product. Use social media, partnerships, and storytelling to showcase how your toy or game can impact lives.
Overcoming Challenges: Marketing and Visibility
Future plans for Base6 include a website refresh, rule set standardization, new content, and digital tools. Designed to evolve, the platform encourages user generated content and collaboration, transforming it from a game into a dynamic educational ecosystem. The bigger idea here is to think of a toy or game as an open ended tool that invites users to modify and build upon it, maximizing engagement and relevance across age groups and contexts.
Advice for Newcomers in the Toy and Game Industry
For anyone just starting out, the core message is simple: take action. The toy industry thrives on passion and persistence, and waiting for perfect is a trap. Start small, test, and iterate. Engage your community early because feedback is gold. Most importantly, build a platform and not just a product, thinking about how users will adapt and expand it over time. The journey behind Base6 proves that combining tech innovation with playful design can create tools that genuinely inspire creativity and learning.
Conclusion
The Base6 platform is a testament to what happens when thoughtful design meets a passion for learning. Whether used in classrooms, family game nights, or entrepreneurial workshops, it encourages imagination, strategic thinking, and social interaction, core skills that serve learners of all ages. The broader invitation is this: rethink your approach to toys by embracing modular, community driven design and opening yourself up to endless possibilities for play and learning.
Connect with Blaine McDonnell
If you’re interested in learning more about Armoin, LLC or connecting with Blaine McDonnell you can reach out through the following channels:
- Website: Visit Base 6’s official website for the product, latest news and more.
- Website : Visit Armoin, LLC’s official website for updates, discussions, and behind-the-scenes content.
- Website: Visit Hive ID’s official website for the product, latest news and more.
Transcript
Jason Hsieh (00:42)
Hi everyone, welcome back to another episode of Toy Business Unboxed. Today’s episode we’re joined by Blaine, a technologist, a futurist, and a creativity coach who have introduced his first ever tabletop creation, “Base 6”, the card game. Designed for age seven and up, Base 6 isn’t just a game, it’s also a flexible platform that boosts creativity, cognitive skill, and also social interactions. Blaine’s gonna show us how his tech background and his passion for game design.
to this current innovative tool for learning and for play. Thank you so much for joining us on the podcast today.
Blaine Mcdonnell (01:14)
Thank
Jason Hsieh (01:16)
Yeah, so first of all, will you mind sharing a little bit about your background and what inspired you to create the Base 6 game?
Blaine Mcdonnell (01:23)
Yeah, I came out of the innovation at AT &T Labs. We were designing things and really I felt the most energized creating effects and the production and distribution side of it. So what got me sparked though is you brought up the futurist aspect and I had started reading a book from Jane McGonigal.
And she had a book called “Imaginable,” which was about the gamification of futures thinking. Okay. So read that got really interested in it and ended up taking certification course in that. And, they introduced a game in there, but it seemed, it was like an hour long. It seemed like a lot of work. And then I left out of that and went into design, thinking, alien, thinking, strategic thinking.
And all the gamification seemed a lot like work, I also researched study cognitive flow and getting in that state of continual creativity and really wanted to ignite that. And I thought back to how I was thinking when I was in AT &T Labs and my business.
and what, you know, read a bunch of other creativity books and really understand the process and wanted to make that fun, something that you’d come back to, but not be taught or instructed or really realize you’re learning and so I call it “covert skill building tool” because it’s really trying to just spark that flow in people.
And then once it’s going, they just keep flowing. And that’s what was happening to me in the ideation labs. It’s like every week we’d have, or I’d have like 60, 70 different ideas. And then I’d hold business models.
Jason Hsieh (03:02)
I see. And I know you have a copy of your game if you can share, like, explain a little bit about how the game is being played and what is the rule behind it? That’d be great.
Blaine Mcdonnell (03:13)
Yeah, so this is what the box looks like. We’ve got 182 cards in here and 10 dice.
The cards are really a blend between, I had a lot of influence from like Uno, Dominoes, Story Cubes, and regular playing cards, because I play a lot of playing cards and I wanted to be able to play my playing card games, play a lot of, you know,
We always came back to UNO. I really wanted something that could spark the creativity in storytelling, something you’d want to come back to all the time, like UNO and playing cards, people just always come back to those games. So I kind of wanted to bridge those together. So, and then we have some actions too. So took… ⁓
staring playing card ranks on all the cards. See, and then they’re, they could be rotated anyway. And then images to where you can join them. They’re all unique images repeated six times. Never on the same color, never on the same rank, never on the same ordinal position across that. And there’s really two sets in there. I do want to cover that. That’s one set is
just a standard set with standard, suits and then the other set is action set. Originally when it was built was intended to be an expansion. Okay. Or a set. My kids loved it so much. We combined it and made it one set and just went, that direction with it rather than have an expansion. That’s why we call it the launch pack. Cause it’s kind of like has your dice has your.
the standard card game, which we built a lot of games for that. And you can create a lot more. And then we have actions, have so many.
Jason Hsieh (04:50)
So you line up the edges, then what do you do next?
Blaine Mcdonnell (04:54)
Okay, so the base rules, it plays down similar to UNO and we’ve got lots of rules, but the base rules that are in the box are similar gameplay as UNO where you’re playing down, but you’re playing out across spatial area and you’re joining cards. There are some distinct differences between UNO and this and a lot more strategy.
So you’re going to combine based on rank or color. Come up with a story based on the combination. for example, here is a bee and an archer. And they’re intentionally abstract so you can interpret them how you want or play a relationship style game.
Jason Hsieh (05:18)
Okay
Blaine Mcdonnell (05:33)
And it gives the player also agency to where they can decide which card to play and which sides to play it on. And you could join on multiple sides and come up with much more complex and intricate stories. I might say like this one is, I do a lot of archery, so this is a little personal for me. I was out shooting my bow and arrow and I stepped on a nest and they attacked me.
something like, I think it can be as funny or age appropriate or as detailed as you want. We talked about developing courses too, for kids and lesson plans. You can take them and use them to drive a, story creation, a comic book creation or pictures, depending on the age group.
We got StoryCubes initially to spark my imagination with doing their homework assignment. They always said they couldn’t think of anything. But after it just went on a shelf and it hasn’t really been out since. So that’s kind of, I didn’t want that because I think that’s a
good skill to build.
Jason Hsieh (06:35)
I see.
Blaine Mcdonnell (06:36)
We recommend coming up with a story, but it’s not required. Sometimes you get in two, three other people, some people are telling stories and then people’s put down on a combination and then finally start wanting to tell a story. So it’s intended to kind of bring that social at a communication aspect out of people.
Jason Hsieh (06:54)
Okay. And you also really help developing like creativity skills as well, right?
Blaine Mcdonnell (06:59)
What? Yeah, the creativity, the communication of the ideas. When you’re like an entrepreneur, you’re also we do this pitch karaoke thing in our entrepreneurship group. And we use the cards for that one time or a couple of times where we combine the images and then we sell it. We pitch it. And we also have a game that we interact.
with kind of like an investment type approach with that kind of idea and into the gameplay, which is more of a scoring model for the stories. The base one is not in the book is more just to kind of pull you out of that. And then once you’re comfortable in that situation, you can expand into more of those scored on ones or the relationship ones.
Jason Hsieh (07:42)
I see. What would you say is the main target age group that this game is designed for and how flexible is the gameplay?
Blaine Mcdonnell (07:49)
Well, really it’s designed for anybody. I’ve even played with five-year-olds, but the box is marked at seven-year-old, seven and up. It is intended for anybody. I mean, anybody plays, my grandpa was 98 playing cards when he died. So these could be used for that and we got a lot of detailed strategy games that more for adult groups.
My friends all love playing. We’ve got one called High Queen, which is a head-to-head one that a lot of people really like that have played it.
Jason Hsieh (08:21)
I see. And I see you also refer to this whole kind of ecosystem you’re building as a platform. Can you also kind of expand on the other things that you’re also building that’s attached to this?
Blaine Mcdonnell (08:32)
A lot of people when I’m out at the shows, come up and say, it’s a system like playing cards. For me, a system is more like I go out and buy a game to be able to play it on here. This is really more of a building platform to where you can build, create, launch, or share. We’ve got a whole community aspect.
I’m in this to spread the passion for creativity and building these other critical skills like lateral thinking, divergent thinking. It’s really kind of and social skills honestly. We’ve been getting all this staring at your phones all day or being stuck on a computer all day really don’t get that social interaction.
Jason Hsieh (09:13)
I see. And can you give a more example of what type of activities or game can people really build around the basic system?
Blaine Mcdonnell (09:21)
Well, they are abstract. standard playing card game, we’ve got any standard dice game. We’ve taken those standard playing card games that everybody’s used to. And then we put a creativity spin on it, or maybe a strategy spin on it, or a spatial, because it plays out because of the shape and you have sides to join on. It leads to a bunch of
different ways to play. So we’ve created some unique games. I think we’ve got Pyramid and Diamond, and we’ve got also a three-way game out. And we have spatial battle games that we’ve built and shared the rules out. also, I referenced the High Queen, which is the head-to-head competition one.
Jason Hsieh (10:08)
I see, I see, I see.
Blaine Mcdonnell (10:09)
But I wanted to touch on, have like six dimensions to it You know, you got the dice, the spatial, the ranks, the suits, actions and
the images and you can use all those elements to build a game. You don’t have to use every one of them in each game. You could play like a stack version of the game. And we have a stack version called “sia”, which is six in Celtic, which is intended more for space constrained or travel.
We have those rules out online as well.
Jason Hsieh (10:40)
Okay, so you have a few different rules that you just mentioned that you can play the game a little bit differently. And how will you say with your background in tech and that really influenced the way you are designing the current games and also your journey in the game industry so far?
Blaine Mcdonnell (10:54)
Now, a lot of that, going back the introduction where we were talking about in the ideation labs, that was, were designing hardware, designing ways to communicate and just connecting things that might not normally be connected. Then leaving, starting the business, we were also combining things that
weren’t usually together and coming up with new products. And then you look at all the previous research that comes out of, I worked a bit at, know, Monsanto and Solutia. That’s how they were inventing things too. They took things from nature, aspects of nature, put them with the material, bring them together and they have a new product. They did that with, you know.
I think Posted Nodes, Velcro, stuff like those examples, and that they came out of That’s kind of how we evolve naturally and being able to make that connection. The other key thing is noticing the combination, noticing the connection.
Jason Hsieh (11:52)
How do you envision Base 6 being used in the school environment or other learning environment?
Blaine Mcdonnell (11:58)
That really is back you the class up into groups and rather than playing traditional ones, we’ve created some lesson plans to where you might
combine three cards to come up with the character, combine three cards to come up with the environment, and three cards to come up with the action. And then you come out with a story or an idea or product out of that. Maybe in the youngest grade, like second grade, you might end up drawing a picture out of that. Then the next one, you might turn that into a comic book. And then the next one, you might turn it into a story. then in fourth grade, you take that and you pitch it as an idea.
and try to sell the class on it and then the class votes, you know, kind of evolve those skills into more of a product creation type mindset.
Jason Hsieh (12:47)
Okay, I see, see. And so far in your journey of creating these companies, what are some of biggest challenges you have faced creating your first product?
Blaine Mcdonnell (12:57)
where your business is best suited, which is in the marketing aspect has been the biggest, the biggest struggle for me and the amount of time, investment. So having that skill and you’ve helped me a lot, with that as well too. So thank you. And being able to position and reposition, products to be more visible.
Jason Hsieh (13:11)
Oh you’re welcome. Yeah.
Blaine Mcdonnell (13:18)
That’s one of the biggest struggles.
Jason Hsieh (13:20)
That’s
a common struggle and challenge is a lot of the startup entrepreneur that I talk to also face. It’s not easy to kind of get the name out there and really bring the kind of a market awareness to the product that you’re creating.
So what is next for Base 6 the platform, the games, what is on the horizon, any additional expansion you’re working on or any partnership that you’re working on?
Blaine Mcdonnell (13:43)
We’ve got a lot going on. Giving a facelift to the site. And then we’ve also got, I’m working on some code for changing the rule sets to be in a standard template that also focuses on what skills that particular game focuses on. And also the courses and the lesson plans. We do have additional
sets that we have in print play right now, but really want to focus on this first product, getting the rule sets out there. Those rules can be applied to all the sets. They bring more imageries, more color in there to create more stories. And we have some other actions too, which you could test out the actions. We’ve put them out online. You can use
like overload the question mark or one of the other cards with a different type of test that out. We’ve got some of a matrix out online too. The matrix ends up coming up to 319 million different gameplay variations. They’re just like modifications, the dice were really in the set for that matrix.
Jason Hsieh (14:42)
That’s a lot.
Blaine Mcdonnell (14:48)
The Matrix is one sheet and you roll the 10 die and it comes up with just the six rows, the color and the columns, the number. And it comes up with a bunch of different variations that you can pretty much play a different game every day for the rest of your, or every, what minute for the rest of your life. And we also have what?
Jason Hsieh (15:06)
you
Blaine Mcdonnell (15:08)
We also have patterns, which then double that. So, yeah, are actually triple it because there’s three different ways to do that.
Jason Hsieh (15:16)
I see, I Yeah, for sure. So as well kind of wrapping up in today’s interview here, if you have to share just one piece of advice with someone else that’s also getting started in the toys and game industry, what would that be?
Blaine Mcdonnell (15:17)
It’s a lot.
Well, I work with a lot of entrepreneurs and I always say don’t be afraid, take action, get moving. There are a lot of people in this particular segment, a lot of good people that really love what they’re doing. It’s great community, great support for the most part And, everybody’s willing to help, everybody out. just do it.
Take action. is that’s the most important that you need. Everybody’s got a lot of ideas. The ones that move on it are
the ones that are gonna make progress.
Jason Hsieh (15:57)
For sure. So for those listeners and our audience that’s interested to learn a bit more about you and your companies, where is the best place for people to find you online?
Blaine Mcdonnell (16:05)
I’m on LinkedIn, and probably the only Blaine Mcdonnell out there on LinkedIn. so I’m pretty easy to find. We have our site is a dash s i x.com for the game. My company are “Armoin”, armoin.com is more of a technology consulting business. and then we have.
another one called Hive-ID and we do apps and hardware technology, Which is HIVE-ID. There’s a few Hive IDs out there. and then I’m on Facebook too.
We have one for the business and for me as well. We have TikTok and Instagram. I have not been posting enough on there. We’re trying to work on, I’ve got some help. Somebody joined me in this adventure and they’re gonna really help with the video content and pushing that out.
Jason Hsieh (16:56)
I see. Okay. Thank you so much for sharing that. And thank you so much for your time today, sharing your journey and some of your experience building your own card game company so far.
Blaine Mcdonnell (17:04)
Thank you. And I do want to add, my kids have been helping out a ton. We’re also working on a book with the game. So, it is a family kind of business. We just invite everybody to join the family and share.
Jason Hsieh (17:19)
I see, yeah, thank you for sharing that. And for our listeners, thank you so much for tuning in to this episode of Toy Business Unboxed podcast. We hope you have enjoyed today’s conversation and find it insightful and inspiring. If you like what you have heard, be sure to subscribe to our podcast on your favorite platform so you never miss an episode. We really appreciate your support and we’d love it if you can leave us a review and share the podcast with your friend and colleague. For more resource, tips, and the latest update within the toys and game industry,
visit our website at toy-launch.com. Join the conversation and connect with us on social media using #toybusinessunboxed. We’d love to hear your feedback and suggestions for future episodes. Until next time, keep innovating, keep creating, keep bringing joy to 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.
Blaine Mcdonnell (18:08)
Thank you.
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